John Romagna

Flight 800

Memories are like grown children
When they have their own lives,

Returning after months,
Years,

My mother would arrive, walk the Seine,
Tour the Louvre, have coffee
At a sidewalk table.

Detectives told me, the force concussion
Is like a bullet to the brain.

‘Shakespeare was perfect,’
She said, ‘The rest struggle.’
Though it seemed to a boy
There was never a day she didn’t know what to do,
Afternoons I took too long walking home from school
Kicking stones into driveways and rocky gardens,
She didn’t remind me,
What will you make of yourself?

She took me to London,
Rome,
We could stand in places Michelangelo
Cursed a pope,
Cicero spoke,
Caesar died.

I didn’t have to be like them.
I could be a father,
Teach.

She let me close an easy door on her life,
The way I might close off a spare bedroom,
Photos, furnishings, everything
In place.

I see her,
Seated in a cone of light, savoring
A glass of wine, a few pages of the book
I gave her. It was not her first trip
To Paris.