Three Minutes in Nijmegen

All I recall from that day are shards, fragments.

The rumbling train ride to the eastern city.

Hans’ height, the gentle hunch in his back.

Ria’s tight hug around my waist, those cerulean eyes

searching my face for any semblance of my father’s—

how close they’d all become after he hitched a ride

with their children back in the eighties.

How they had a recording of his voice—would I like

to hear it?—it must be around here somewhere.

My brother and I playing chess with the same

wooden pieces his hands had held. So many moves,

nearly endless possibilities, except the one.

The world beyond the window all

wrought-iron, cloudscape, wine-red brick.

—

Think of all the people in other apartments,

other cities, brewing coffee, reading newspapers,

strumming guitars, sitting on sofas alone.

Or those wandering foreign sidewalks, humming

unfamiliar songs, eyes overcast with want.

What would change if we listened to their stories,

if we gave them a lift to where they were going, if

we invited them into the groves of our dinner tables?

Sons and daughters, all of us. And how easy

to see the leaps from stranger to friend to family

are bends along the same road.

—

What would I say to my father if I had

three unhurried minutes?

Perhaps: What did you dream of as a child?

Have you discovered a hidden key that unlocks joy?

Maybe: Is there some prismatic plane from which you

see and know me, smiling at what you see and know?

Or: Can one distinguish between yearning and loneliness

and love, or do they each taste essentially the same?

Love; how saccharine a word in a world where

a child fumbles in a slum for one crumb to

fill her famished belly,  

where a three-hundred-year-old pecan tree is

splintered for the real estate clinging to its roots,

where a teenage boy slips into a teeming plaza,

disintegrating himself in a pink bloom in the hopes

of taking others with him.

—

But take me back to those three minutes in Nijmegen,

porcelain mugs of tea cooling on the table, forgotten,

as Hans and Ria adjust the volume and the cassette

whirs into place with a crackle, an inhale, a voice:

National Eddie Broadcasting System,

one, two, three, four, five. [rustle]

You know, with all the education I thought I had,

this is the third time I’ve tried to make this tape…

Outside the apartment, a bicycle dings merrily,

neighbors mutter good-naturedly on the sidewalk,

a woodlark flickers past the glass, and I cannot

believe that what is happening is happening.

I have tried so many times, too. I am trying still.