Babushka

For Bobby,

my dear traveling companion in the 60’s

Babushka

Once, we laughed together

riding the freight trains from the thick eastern cities

to the wide emptiness of the Colorado Rockies and the California ocean

Smoking Bull Durham roll-your-own cigarettes

we were stopped for hitchhiking in upstate New York

and went to court in the judge's house during dinner

Standing there with our long ringlets of hair and Salvation Army clothes

while his wife told the children not to be like us

but I could see the light of mutual recognition

as their eyes met mine with smiles and secret sharings

He sent us off to three days in jail, and they cut off all our hair

Stuck for three days in the same spot hitchhiking

on Route 99 in the Southern California desert

knowing or believing that the moment we didn't worry about getting a ride

we would get one (because that moment would last forever)

"Telegraph and Haste, Berkeley!"

you shouted out when we got separated

on the freight trains at Wishram, Washington, on the Columbia River

Freight Train on the Columbia River near Wishram, WA

You headed south on a flatcar,

me, watching the train go by too fast now to jump

And we met there two weeks later, full of stories and laughter

proud of our train dirt and heavy knapsacks

Locked in a boxcar for two days in Willits, California

stranded off on a siding peeing in a plastic bag, and shitting there too

eating raw brown rice and sipping tamari

Some kids cutting through the train yards from school

heard us shouting and let us out

Now,

you are a Jehovah's Witness

sad, indrawn, resigned to be a good Christian

resigned to be 'married' to the Lord,

not even looking me in the eye when you talk

except to warn me of my fate in damnation.

I shared my only heavy blanket with you

as we rode that empty boxcar over Grant's Pass in the winter.

I loved you as my brother

Why do I feel now that you are so afraid to live?

Did something scare you?

Was it the time we walked past midnight

late fall on the northern coast of Maine

our feet shuffling the leaves?

We passed softly into dream that night

and fell asleep so deeply

on a pine needle-strewn forest bed

that when we woke in the still early dawn

it seemed both of us had just been born,

and in a golden leafy glory

we looked at each other and cried for joy just to be alive

Or,

Was it all those stars crowding the sky

on that wild night train out of Salt Lake City

riding the outside underneath a piggyback

freezin' and shoutin' out our praise to each other in the wind

just to keep warm?

Or,

Was it your Father

who you always felt sad about,

still mourning your Mother sitting alone in his small room

unshaven, in a New York Ghetto, the windows all dirty?

Did you become this way for him somehow?

Because he never looked at the stars anymore?

Because he never shared our causeless joy?

Because he never cried till he laughed?

Babushka, there are no causes for laughing in your gospel

Babushka, we called each other

Babushka, I call you now

and I wonder

if I ever really knew you

or we simply spent

some time together . . .