After all the years, what’s left
are names. Fasnet in Emmendingen,
weekend Bummeln with an upturned
thumb. Breisach imperially sealed
to the Habsburgs, still guarding
a foggy Rhein To Bagersee, how many
stops along the Strassenbahn. Ganterbier
and Kaiserstuhl, Totenkopf’s volcanic
crown. He snapped my picture
in a stubblefield of Drachenzähne
from the last world war. Schwarzwald
Sundays, the path to Wendelin,
patron of shepherds, a saint enshrined
in birdsong.. Bodensee. That trek
up Schauinsland to look for
Switzerland. Donaueschingen
promising 1700 miles of Danube,
a waltz to the Black Sea we never
sailed. Thousands of years of names.
Every name to call but his.
Categories:
schwarzwald, places
Form: List
We hired the neighbor kid
to put it all on eBay. He started
with the train-set you bought me on a whim,
Santa Fe, like the locomotive that pulled me
through Navajo country 40 years ago.
Now, this HO gathers dust, the cobwebs
aren’t to scale. Next we’ll sell
that beer stein from the Schwarzwald,
the potlatch bowl (Athabascan)
from our Alaska days.
No room in a smaller house
for my mother’s blue willow (so many
Thanksgivings) or my dad’s
apothecary jars. The Mexican tree of life
from Oaxaca. It’s time to downsize.
What kind of life, I wonder,
without cathedral pines outside the door,
and deer sipping from the water trough.
My saddle from high school, formed
to the back of a black mare sold
when I went away to college.
Back when I was gathering the clutter
of a lifetime, never imagining
someday I’d have to leave it.
Categories:
schwarzwald, life, nostalgia, time,
Form: Free verse