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I got the news on the satellite phone:
Jason, come home, Jason, dear,
I heard it on the forest floor.
Six years of back country trails to the lake,
Machete and snake, machete I learned
To cradle in the Old State Park.
Roosevelt, ’33, he had a plan
For every young man:
Give him an ax and a seed;
Give him a pack and a tree;
Teach him to care for himself;
Give him fresh air for his health;
Send money back to family.
Back to Baltimore,
The tallboy convenience store,
The indifferent, the endless war.
And I know what that is,
And I know what that is,
And I don’t need it anymore,
But I have to go home.
Luke was the son of some well-to-do folk;
My family was broke, but we became friends,
The parking lot, the chewed up field.
I started in the park just as he was going in,
A hard eight to ten for selling to kids;
My momma worked the county jail.
Roosevelt’s Tree Army, under the sun,
The work would be done while America
Bled by the greed of the rich,
The boys planted trees and found God in the pitch,
They stared at the sod in each fist—
Why am I telling you this?
Is it that I’m nervous to be going back?
Back to Baltimore,
The tallboy convenience store,
The indifferent, the endless war.
And I know what that is,
And I know what that is,
And I don’t need it anymore,
But I have to go home.
Luke, I guess, got himself into a fight,
Took him to the infirmary later that night,
Nothing serious, sure, but next morning he died,
Then the satellite phone with the crew,
Which meant I didn’t cry.
I’m taking the train to take time for my thoughts,
Pregnant with loss, preparing for all
The things that maybe make you feel.
I’ll pay my respects and then I’ll take a walk,
The neighborhood block,
And then I will leave.
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The man who played with model trains
In the furnished basement painted black—
How it pleased him every day,
The pattern of the rail,
The pattern of the tiny track.
One night he slips and hits his head
As he reaches for a sleeper car,
And the lights kept blinking red,
Now level with his eye,
His miniature Place de la Gare.
The kids knew something wasn’t right
In the morning when he kissed them all,
He didn’t say a word.
And the model trains keep going round.
Showered, shaved, but sullied still,
With a fist of pink and blue and red.
And he will swallow every pill
To help him with his fear
Of getting from the bath to bed.
And the model trains keep going round.
Eyes cased in rime.
A face that’s chapped with tiger’s tears.
How his wife will mark the time
By learning how to love;
He’s been like this for seven years.
And now as a last resort,
She takes him to the ward in Redding
Thirty miles away.
And through, through the spidered glass,
The headstraps and the gas,
She watches as they put him under.
And the model trains keep going round.
She drives him home in the family car
Stealing glances at this body strange:
The vacant smile, the clean white scar
On the man who disappeared,
The man who played with model trains.
The man who made her laugh,
The man who played with model trains.
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Those neighbor kids, they meant no harm.
Came home from church to find a three-alarm.
To my sister’s, she gave us a key.
Three years, one room, two kids and me.
But he would lift my burden—
All the power, the comfort
In his name.
Is that so much to ask—
To believe and be unashamed?
Stay after church, for friends of friends of Bill.
I tell the story of my son, his need, the pain to kill.
How I saved all the money, a box in a drawer.
How I’d give it to him; knew what it was for.
But he would lift my burden—
All the power, the comfort
In his name.
Is that so much to ask
To believe and be unashamed?
The visits get harder.
He lowers his eyes, and every time
They get darker.
I show him the pictures drawn by his kid.
How do you learn you can smother someone with your love?
Isn’t loving at all in this world hard enough?
Those neighbor kids, they meant no harm.
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“What if I told you
That I’m on this train
Because my two grown sons were frightened—
Me driving through the night
On a stretch of farm-stand highway
In Mississippi—
‘Cause they don’t need a hood or a cross or a tree.
What if I told you
That I’m headed to a funeral in Tupelo
On the hundred acre farm
Purchased by my great-grandfather
Who learned to read
‘Cause his master’s daughter,
Taught him secretly,
And not knowing
What kind of schooling
His own children would receive,
He taught them never to sign
Their names on anything—
‘Cause they don’t need a hood or a cross or a tree.
And would he have believed
That his great-granddaughter—
All the way to the Ivy League?
And would he have believed
The millions of dollars—
And yet still unsafe
On that stretch of farm-stand highway?
What if I told you
That my eldest son
Loves a white girl
Whom I adore,
But who lives in a part of town where
A black man might be mistaken for—
‘Cause they don’t need a hood or a cross or a tree.
No, they don’t need a hood or a cross or a tree.
And if I told you all of that,
Maybe you would understand
Why I have limited sympathy
For your desire to know the suffering
Of the working white man.”
Monica explained
In the dining car
As we hurtled South
In the growing dark.
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We have finished planting for the season,
And now we make our way to Pasco, Washington
To see our distant relations
On our once-a-year vacation.
We took two buses and a train to get to this one.
As long as we don’t drive, that’s alright within our creed.
When people stare at us we’re taught to look away,
But it’s hard not to wonder what they see.
Singing with a stranger
Singing with a stranger
Singing with a stranger
From the false world,
Singing with a stranger
Singing with a stranger
Singing with a stranger
From the false world.
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