Geography

(After W.S. Merwin)

If we had not bombed Cambodia I would not
have been standing over the heating grate
at 116th Street and Broadway selling roasted chestnuts
for the Quakers and the stone-hearted geology student
I eventually married would not have paused
to advise me that the sidewalk was shale and
if my great-grandmother had not danced for the Tsar
and my grandfather had not been mesmerized
by my grandmother’s huge heart-shaped amethyst
mined most likely by enslaved Siberians
then my mother would not have dropped
one oar at dusk into Lake Ardor and
the night swimmer who was to become my father
would not have heard her cries and if the German
baby nurse had not pulled my fingers
from my mouth or kept me from eating dust
I would not have sent away for an ant farm
or been haunted by the story of the freed Virginia man
returned to captivity and I would not have become
an expert on plants that grow in saltwater
or embarked on a cross-country macrobiotic diet
in a 1954 Ford with a man I had known
only two days arriving in Miami just in time
to spend New Year’s Eve breathing old ammonia
and holding my father’s hand so dry
there was no sweat left while the ball
slipped slowly in Times Square and morphine
dripped from a glass bottle glistening
like grandmother’s finest crystal.

(Published in Mudfish)