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Sonnets from Round Trip
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It starts like other trips, with us getting cheated
by our first cab driver, the one Nan’s leaning towards
as though they're friends, a scenario repeated
so often I tell my heart not to race, move forward
through the shouting to the point where I can shake my head sadly,
muttering this is wrong, wrong, like the cabby’s rabbi,
though I don’t speak his language. He’s behaved badly,
charging us above the meter. He shouts, so I
know he knows he’s in the wrong. And then he spits
on the pavement at our feet, welcoming us to Spain
with curses that are almost gallant, his arms split
wide as the little street we’re trapped on. Come again,
you cheap son of a whore, I imagine he’s saying.
It’s exhilarating, but not worth the fare we’ve paid him
§
I saw something just lovely on the street,
looking down from my hotel room here in Madrid.
An old crone, dressed in black, complete
with aluminum cane, was hobbling slowly, rigid-
ly, and a young man in short sleeves,
not heading to work, but not loafing along either,
maybe heading to dinner, or to meet friends at a cervezaria,
stopped to ask her a question. She nodded briefly
and he took her arm. He took her arm like her own
grandson, and they followed, slowly, slowly, her trajectory
not his, for who knows what distance. Perhaps he’s prone
to gallant behavior. Perhaps it’s merely
a custom of the place, a custom that supports such pleasant deeds
at least in a few. But it was good to see.
§
She says, “I like your galette better than mine,”
so he hands over his plate. Later she’s the only one
to get dessert, and he digs in his spoon, which is fine
with her. They seem so calm. Of course the sun
shining straight down the narrow streets
slows up the whole town. And no one can ever know
a couple’s private thoughts, what in the other person defeats
longings silenced long ago. But in the blazing afternoon they loll
in the hotel pool with long tubes of colored foam
they make into arches, or with ends that stick up like tendrils.
I watch them from the shade. They seem at home
with each other. And a certain kind of peace distills
into me. What more could a man want for his daughter
than to see her with her husband, head thrown back in thoughtless laughter?
§
“It’s like a river of purple,” Becky said, and we looked
for a place to pull over. How can fields be such a color?
Brian jumped a ditch. And that’s where he took
half a memory chip full of photos. It’s as if some solar
being bled on the earth, or someone stared at the sun
till all hues turned inside out. Or this was another planet
with another décor. We did a complete rotation. One
couple in the foreground, then another with the mother standing
with the daughter, then daughter with husband and father.
Did the flash go off for a fill? At noon there was so much light
everyone’s face was shining, lit from below. Gather
these moments, when you can. Leaving the bright
fields we searched for a restaurant, and found one, open late,
where we all tasted Brian’s milkshake. It was great.
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