Older: Portland, Maine, 1971

Why did you have to look at him, lock eyes
walk your body near his, where exactly
in Portland were you when you showed him
your soul when your lips kissed his
that first time? Were you in a malt shop
or in a park’s bandstand, with clouds
in the sky? Was it night or afternoon?

That Friday you came out of the music store
from visiting a friend who worked there,
what was it that made you open the door
of the blue Cadillac and get in back,
with him at the wheel, and anther man,
Reid Parley riding shotgun. What was it?
You were sixteen and Everett, twenty two.

He’d have you home in time for supper.
What made you believe that lie, Cathy?
What kept you in the Caddy’s back seat
looking out at trees, cars parked on streets
as you left that city? Why did you stay
when the Caddy slowed down, as it did,
why didn’t you jump out and run away?

Why didn’t you run when Reid, his hand
on the back of your neck, walked you
towards a gas station’s restroom door?
Or when Everett got new tires on the car
he’d stolen, and paid with a credit card
also stolen, paid in a Fort Fairfield garage.
Why didn’t you run? You were way up

in Aroostook, why didn’t you loose your neck
from Reid’s grip and run to a stranger
who could have called the law who in turn
could have seen you got back home?
Why did they take you from Aroostook
into New Brunswick, not crossing where
most cars cross but on an obscure road?

Why did Everett leave the Tobique
Reservation without you, leave you?
Had he fallen out of love with your face
and body somewhere on that journey
from Portland, Maine to New Brunswick?
Had he ceased wanting to kiss and caress
you? What happened he stopped loving

you and your love for him turned to fear?
Why is there a story of a girl running out
of a house naked in the night of a blizzard
running out into a field that must have been
like a vast nowhere, a nocturne nothing
running out naked, the snow falling fast.
Why was she you? What became of you?

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The Pearls

I look out and see the long flat strip
of land that diminishes. Earth meets sky.
Empty. I’ve come to like it out here. The air
base, where World War II pilots trained,
used only for gliders now. On its far end,
across the airbase, a prison they were just
starting work on when you were here.

Here is flat and there are no trees, nothing
like winding roads of the north Louisiana
you came from, or the green woodsy hills
part of Tennessee where you are. For a time
you were here, with the metal buildings and
no trees, no water to speak of, lakes, well,
there’s a small artificial one, and a pond

out by the airbase, where, when you were
here, we walked dogs that have been gone
for years. A few nights back, driving home
from a jazz concert I detoured onto a road
that goes past the park with the pond and
came to a T, and thought to turn right but it
was so incredibly dark when I looked right

I told myself that’s too dark for me. Anyway
it just leads to an iron gate they put up to
keep people from driving down onto the air
base. I turned left. That darkness was like
no darkness I’d ever seen. Don’t go there, I
told myself. But there was another time,
late afternoon, Christmas Eve, I went out

walking on the airbase, the same long strip
where we had walked dogs. Only this late
afternoon I was alone and the air was quite
foggy. I had a portable device that let me
listen to CDs one disc at a time, and on it
this one CD of Jelly Roll Morton, it’s called
The Pearls, a ballad about a woman

who went to prison for killing another
woman (over a man), and what happened
to her when she got there. Her message is,
Be a good girl and wear the pearls,
a ballad of regret, sung, told by Jelly Roll
who plays piano as he tells her story. It was
very foggy as I walked the long air strip

listening to that music that Christmas Eve,
with her story adding up to, it wasn’t worth
it. He wasn’t worth it, that man not worth
going to prison for. The next day, Christmas
we had an ice storm; it was so slippery I
couldn’t even step outside and walk around.
But before the ice settled, early morning,

I was able to get my dog Jesse—do you
remember her, the Wheaton?—and ride
around town a short while in my red truck.
The ice was just starting. We rode around
town maybe twenty minutes, this town of
flat roads, few trees, but we didn’t go by
the airbase. By then they’d built the prison.

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