4466. BEARING SO MANY COUNTS

BEARING SO

MANY COUNTS

The beating of a winged heart, as if some

strange car emblem or the logo of a crazy man,

sends ripples across the face  -  air in waves is

disarrayed. I shouldn't have been here, but I am.

This is a warehouse of old, for sugar. The wharves

here were once packed to the gills with tumult

and package  -  canvas bags, burlap sacks, and

drayage wagons filled. Broad-shouldered men then

lifted and rolled the cart, flipped up to ride along 

two wheels. It wasn't much, but it was a living.

-

These old men are all dead now, as are most

surely the families they kept  -  sliced and boxed

in some Italian or Irish section of one of those

myriad Manhattan far-flung cemeteries which

cover hundreds of acres. All silent, and every

story ended. Those carts are museum-pieces

now  -  of interest, except that no one cares.

-

There's a Seven-Eleven now, where my uncle's

house was  -  and it was his father's before that,

and before that too. So old, the very boards and

bones of that place hurt. Then they tore it down,

and now, in his name, people get coolers and

Slurpees, hot dogs and lotto, ice cream and

sodas and magazines. And, what the hell,

all that stuff too will soon be gone away.

-

Memories like to dwell in their own private Hell.