Crossing the River by Ray Gonzalez

Author:Ray Gonzalez
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504024075
Publisher: The Permanent Press (ORD)

JAMES HATHAWAY

Private History

Growing up, father gave me a story

about himself: in his heart of hearts

he had always been a writer,

but he had lost his best work somehow—

left it on a table at the student union,

forgetting everything in the heat of some

minor argument, or given it to a careless

student, who had gone on unconsciously

to law school and was never heard from

again. Or perhaps the kindly janitor, trying

to neaten up father’s chaos of old coffee

and small press trash, had thrown it out,

mistaking it for all that unwanted paper.

He wasn’t sure, but such things naturally

happen. They might not have made him famous,

who knows, still they were his favorite

poems. I naturally never believed

such stories: in my heart of hearts

I knew this kind of thing was always

imaginary. I was cruel: it was expected.

As a child, I knew I was strange, “unnatural”

as father’s friends would say, more interested

in bugs and rocks than people. I remember

a mossy creek I loved to play in, rooting

for salamanders and crayfish under the slimy

rocks, at peace with myself amid the trickle

of water and the green shade. I thought

the deep gorge and the big trees seemed ancient

and holy and not until college did I learn

where this comes from. I remember later

how I went back to this place to find the special

cliffs, the still pools, but all was changed

and shrunk and overgrown. It was wet and smelled,

but not as I remembered. Once, when I was

in graduate school, I told this story in a bar,

to a bunch of weasel-faced friends,

and they laughed, and I drunkenly admitted

that sometimes I thought I had inherited

Wordsworth’s soul—a big mistake. I remember

father too, one evening, having drunk too much,

complaining about the lost work, how it would

never ever come again, knowing that he was

saying too much, but wishing that he could

say more, do more, make us see and believe.

He was inconsolable.

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