Lucas Reilly

I see you on this train.
I can recite your spiel by heart.
You said the same thing yesterday.
Last week, last month, last year.
You said it four summers ago when
I first boarded this Q Train.
     “My name is Lamont.
     I just lost my mom.”

You’re preparing your soliloquy.
I mouth your words like a cinephile
Reciting a film they’ve seen 100 times.
(Me? Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.)
     My name is Lamont.
     I just lost my mom.”

You’re digging in the wrong place.
Your ballcap sags empty. I promise

I don’t think you’re malingering.
But tell: How far back can just go?
Is it true? Grief can be that dense?
A black hole distorting light, time,
Destroying any distinction between
Four months or forty years?

You just lost your mom.
I just buried my baby teeth.
We just ended the Great War.
God was just here, walking among us,
Flipping tables.

Playing piano for champagne-sippers,
Cruise ship cutting the Arctic Circle,
Fingers turning purple and pop-sickly,
Polar dew settling upon the ivories, wondering:
How I got here, nine stories above the North Sea,
Decorating the air for pensioners who requested jazz
Yet talk and clink and fart over the music,
Chewing mouths open, annoyingly so, mercifully so,
Because it’s 43 degrees, and, fingers stiffening,
Every tune is becoming a ballad, thinking,
I could play anything and they wouldn’t notice, thinking,
Thank God because I’m shitting the bed, thinking
Let’s take their cue and pretend I’m not here.

But you’re watching me, little boy: Puffy jacket,
No more than four, watching, eyes frozen
As these snowcapped fjords, watching, turning
To your dad, speaking with your hands, turning
So I can see the wires and plugs in your skull,
So I can see you take him by the hand, slinking
Toward me, as if I’m a conjurer who, like you
Can make magic with his fingers, who, like you
Knows the ineluctable modality of the audible,
Slinking till you’re beside me, pressing the keys,
Your dad mortified, pulling you away until I plead:
Let him play. And so you hammer away at B6,
And I hit it too: B6! B6! Our one note samba,
You feeling what I cannot feel, me hearing what you cannot hear,
And all that sparkling chit-chat is our background now,
Let them listen to our magic, little boy: I will play anything,
Anything for you.