It took me a long time to figure out
what had happened
It was before I was born
but I was alive . . . 105 days waiting to be born
look at the international dateline
west to east Tuesday becomes Monday
. . . Syracuse . . . New York
Summer . . . 1945
. . . and a memory that haunted me for years
about a moment in that day or night
and what happened on a carrier out in the Pacific
I didn’t understand it . . . but it happened to me too
Made up from stories I’d heard
or real
a flash of experience from him to me
either way
I remembered
the instant of the wound
that death that took all night
dragged on then ended
my uncle’s life
. . . my grandmother said she woke up
with a splitting headache that lasted all night
. . . when the headache went away
she knew her son was dead
. . . my father, the older brother,
thought
“It should have been me.”
Maybe I absorbed that too.
I was born on a Monday at the end of October
West to East . . . Tuesday becomes Monday
One summer night when I was 19, I woke with a vision
And, after that, I began to believe
“This is my last year.”
Odd thoughts for a young man
“Why am I alive?” “I’m supposed to be dead.”
“Why?” . . . “This year, then, will be the year I die.”
Ignored; forgotten . . . felt
Deep inside me . . . year after year
When I first remembered what had happened
it was a memory of something that had actually happened
to me
whirling blades,
closer and closer; hitting, cutting
It was real and it happened again
I screamed and screamed
Elinor was there we’d pulled out two other
buried, frozen memories
I’d learned the mistakes a child’s mind can make
and lock inside real facts, re-felt
understood differently
no longer hopeless brought out
forgiven
seen accepted
put back in a different way healing
But this, the most terrible memory, remained a mystery
What had happened? What did it mean?
Much later . . . it seemed to finally come together
A question from me
“Where did that memory about the cutting blades come from?”
Some odd rituals . . . a trance . . . a possibility
A call and a revelation.
When I heard the date of his death
I felt like I knew what had happened
I thought
“The memory was real.”
“Somehow . . . for some reason
as he received the wound that killed him
he reached out and found me in the womb.”
West to east
Somewhere inside I stopped believing
“You’re not supposed to be alive.”
Somewhere inside, I started breathing
Now, even later . . . Monday October 18
Tuesday October 19 out there
and . . . I don’t know
But however it happened
I remembered
It happened to me too