Birthnight

 

 

Birthnight

I was born on August 19, 1947.
I have proof: a hospital bill
handwritten in script, blue ink,
from Sibley Hospital in Washington D.C.
for one childbirth, $48 stamped PAID.
My mom probably picked up the tab.
Dad was careless with pennies and sperm.

On that swampy-hot summer evening
Dad must have driven us home in the
wood-sided Willys, no seat belts, bouncing
beside the Potomac River so broad and so quiet,
the B&O railroad tracks, the coal trains
like black snakes, the C&O canal
in moonlight, the sycamores
heavy with leaves.

In the crumbling brick house
of too few rooms I would sleep
in a closet, for fourteen years my bedroom
was a closet and yet I would grow,
I would leave pennies on the tracks,
swim the river, walk every step of the canal
all the way to West Virginia with a girl
who would hold my hand and kiss my lips
and lie with me among sycamores,
with her I would grow to be a man, a father,
grandfather of wonders who kayak many a river,
who climb many a sycamore,
setting many a penny
on many a track.

.....

From my book Random Saints.

First published in Potomac Review. Thank you Katherine Smith, editor.

Photo by Alan Camerer