DRIVING INTO THE CITY

Lee Friedlander

This poem followed upon the drive into Chicago where our daughter had chosen to go to college.   Thanks to Magpie Tales for reminding me of that experience.

Empty 

                          So tender, I said, “Remember this.

                                 It will be good for you to retrace this path

                                  when you have grown away and stand at last

                                  at the very centre of the empty city.”   

                                                      Seamus Heaney,  “Changes”               

                 

                     Crossing the Skyway bridge

        for the first time, I see what she’s chosen,

       alabaster city  floating clear of my clinging

 as  station by toll station, we drop our  coins into baskets,

         a half dozen lanes running over with cars.

        I forget to look over the railing at lake water,

       bright  sails, I forget everything but my mother,

before the train left for New York,  pinning even more money

   inside my bra, warning:  “Don’t wander  too far

     from the group. Don’t get caught in the subway doors,

 don’t stand too close to the tracks. Always deadbolt 

     the hotel door.”  That was the last year our school

sent its Seniors to  New York.  It’s  nothing but  jungle now

  I hear my  father  say.  Wouldn’t want one of mine living there.

   

            This is Chicago,  I tell him. Not New York.

 And isn’t your grandson now living in Brooklyn?  My father shrugs,

              settles  back into the hum of my own questions.

Where will she live and how far from the campus?  How many

            armed  robberies this year? And  traffic,

               how will she cross streets without 

         being run down?   “Lock your doors,” I say

       as we exit the Skyway.   She  laughs at me.

               Let her.  I can’t let her go without leaving my

    mother’s fears with her, they’re all I can muster right now.

                   We will  climb in our empty car soon enough

    and drive   home without her.   So let us unload  books

           and clothing, her numerous boxes of earrings,

                    my bundles of medicines she shrugs aside

                when I warn her she’ll need them come bitter

                       times.  Icy stairs.  Frigid streets she’ll walk 

                without my knowing where.   This is her city now,

                     let her stand at the heart of it, hearing its

                sirens,  arterial rumblings of El trains

                      and buses.  Its  welcoming emptiness.

from Coming to Rest, LSU Press