Driving Directions for Jack McCarthy

by Sue Allspaw Pomeroy, Boston poet relocated to Denver

You seemed to be a nice man

for your age,

and I wanted to call you “Mister” 

the first time we were introduced,

your hat sitting next to your hand

on the bingo-parlored table.

I wondered if you had the wrong place,

or perhaps the wrong night.

This was poetry,

or so the flier said,

and didn’t men your age

wear grand poobah hats

at some benevolent order

on Friday nights?

When you stepped up to the microphone,

I thought you’d read a sonnet or two,

perhaps a limerick from your years 

of experience.

I did not think your voice

would read with the surefootedness

of a runner,

placing each breath evenly

between the patter of your lines.

Your voice poured over the room,

scratchy like long breakfast conversations

over oatmeal and toast,

“I work with British addresses.”

And despite a slight bandana clad distraction

sitting next to me that night,

you held my attention

through those rolling English hillsides,

down a windy road in Groton, Mass,

with Carol, and then a quiet trip

to a hospital room and unupholstered chairs,

and I thought, I was wrong:

he’s got the right day,

and he’s in the right place.

The day you froze

I think my heart skipped a beat

in your silence

and I wished those nonexistent words

that you had forgotten

into your head.

And by the way, 

you never got to Penistone, Jack,

which may be a small act of discretion 

on your part,

but you’ve left open huge possibilities

for my imagination.

You quoted my own lines

and told me,

“that was good, Sue.”

And like a little girl

who had just finished her first recital

for her father,

I floated on the quiet approval 

in your voice.

You told me about Neponset Circle,

that, as long as you start from there,

you can get anywhere.

I have hung on the edges of your mustache

for another blue highway directive,

a driving lesson from the older school

to show me the interstates that I have 

overlooked.