The Road to Emmaus by Spencer Reece

Author:Spencer Reece
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374713348
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

THE PRODIGAL SON

“Fly at once!” he said. “All is discovered.” —Edward Gorey

For A. J. Verdelle

In Miami, this May afternoon, I look up,

the sky hot, so hot, always, and heating up hotter—

how long I have loved this scene.

The clouds are white optimistic churches;

I cannot number them.

Herons, pelicans, and gulls glide like dreams

through cloud portals, cloud porticos, and cloud porte cocheres

Giotto could have done

with his passion for blues and dimensions.

Hard not to love a place always called by possibility.

Nearby, Cuba is singing and somewhere here

Richard Blanco is writing his poems.

As I enter the city,

my bishop walks with a cane towards our cathedral.

The sun shines on the people

and unites us in a delirium of light.

High above this bleached, scorched, fragile, groin-scented peninsula,

birds track their insects and remain loyal to their nests.

I look up and I feel bliss building

as I did when my father read another book to me,

and another, the pages like wings.

There are moments of memorable patience in this world.

Airplanes advance towards Miami International,

carrying Jewish retirees and Cuban émigrés—

their descending engines disrupt the white-gloved illegal waiters

at the country clubs in Coral Gables, who deliver flan

to ladies who have pulled skin behind their ears like gum.

This is a place where few decisions are doubted.

On South Beach,

where everyone rearranges or expands their sexual parts,

there seems to be no life outside the physical and time

becomes a tricky thing here, spring looks like winter,

winter like spring, the scenes dense, shifting, shut—

and before you know it the rats have preached from the mangoes

and then chewed them into corpses.

And look how the interior decorators

unroll their fresh bolts and wink-wink to new clients—

what would be considered frivolous anywhere else

is here pondered and coerced at great length.

The feminine gains strength.

Moving closer to the cathedral,

the sea presses the harbor, wanting to be loved,

pushing up the cruise ships with its muscles.

The sea says: “I am the sea.”

We have seen Cubans arrive atop dolphins’ backs here.

Mothers have drowned for their sons,

but the cool gray backs of the dolphins have buoyed their children to us,

numbed by the lullaby of sonar clicks.

The sea blesses the city the way mothers do—

forceful, pushy, ungraspable, persistent.

Black mangrove shoots take root on the porous chalky rock,

building themselves up like steeples. Listen.

How the waves love what does not love them back.

Pedicurists buff the toenails of the sugar daddies in the Delano.

Lincoln Road refines its scarlet seductions.

Bees are sticky with tourism inside the motel rooms of the rose.

Red-orange petals from the Royal Poincianas tint the minutes

with flamboyance. Fuchsia bottlebrush blossoms

explode with seeds. I will always love my time in this city,

you might say craziest of cities,

delivering its youth in short shorts

and Rollerblades with rainbow sweatbands.

City smelling of unzipped things.

I do not think the city will ever be mine.

Beautiful Spanish and broken English spoken everywhere.

How I love that sound,

for it is the sound of people making their way

where they were not born.

Maids from Honduras push their carts,

stacking their wrapped soaps,

their cuticles sting with disinfectant,

perspiration staining their uniforms.

O Miami!

For a decade I did not speak to my parents.

Are you listening to me?

I will not bore you with details.

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