Poems for Bobby
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Prologue
These poems were written when my son Bobby Nannariello was fighting with great courage an illness that challenged his health for more than three years. On occasion, the tight fist of his ailments would relax its grip. When Bobby was well, he enjoyed some good health and the opportunities to go about his life. When he was not well, he was always uncomplaining. I cannot recall a single instance of self-pity or his thrashing out at the absence of his good fortune. I have never personally observed such individual courage in anyone, and admire and recall the strength of character he demonstrated.
Your Room
Your golden gated city owns you
And you own it
You are both lover and loved
Your room is like some ancient crevice
And has the feel of a warm secret cave
Safe from the world
Surrounded by cold morning air
With its high green textured ceilings
Its solitary angled window
Searching the shaft of muted light between buildings
A few fresh cut flowers kneel at the window ledge
As if praying for larger doses of sunshine.
There is the eclectic array
Of small tapestries from Iran and Turkey and China
That you so cherish
Asymmetrically hung on the walls
As portholes to distant places.
Cluttered book cases
Provide footprints of your assorted interests
In Germany and art and poetry
The dark minded Herman Hesse
That you read in both German and English
Write-ups on Theater and your cherished letters
That you read and save.
Your bed is a magnet for scattered
Tissues and magazines and stained coffee cups
Unidentifiable half uneaten fruit
Half smoked cigarettes
Among these pieces of your life
Appears an orderliness to this quiet and peaceful disarray.
We spoke of life and ancient feelings
And childhood competitions
And disappointments in friends and foes
And some unachieved
Or maybe unachievable family expectations
Too deep and distant to pass our lips in significant detail
And other feelings struggling for definition.
Some distant anger
Balances precipitously on the tip of your lips
But you swallow it
And push the thought away
Without appeal.
We spoke of the pain and suffering
Dealt to all mortals
To live and to die with dignity
And how precious life is
But the subject is uncomfortable
And we mutually dismiss it.
Enclosed by the muted green walls
Slightly needing a painting
Your room is powerful
You can view and touch the galaxies
Explore the ancient Euphrates
Sail the invincible Nile
Break bread with caliphs and kings and cobblers
Or in a palazzo by a piazza in Pisa
Paint your tongue with summer wine
Born in the dark September morning dew.
Your single Cycloptic window
Can let the entire world enter at your whim
Or at your concurrence hold the world
At arm’s length as you reinvent
The life you have earned de jure.
I search your words and your face
To be certain
Your will to live is vibrant and certain
You sail your bed
Just as a few days ago you sailed a hospital bed
Wired for survival
Searching for calm seas and a safe harbor.
From your room you search for sunrises
Query your mind for truth
Explore fantasies
Dwell on large doses of soft FM’d jazz
From your implacable little black radio
You play slightly dog eared video tapes
And many of black and white films
Your favorite movie “Lawrence of Arabia”
Depicting Lawrence jousting across the sands
Confronting and containing armies
With his steely blue eyes
You take naps with your honey eyed cat
Read Hemingway’s long many comma’d sentences
Scan Dickinson simplistic and perfect poems
Crafted as if carved out of a single piece
Of Carrara marble.
You room is in pleasant and methodical in disarray
With everything precisely where you want it
There will be a better day
And you will traverse the thin stairway
Past the glass etched door
To the sidewalk
Your yellow brick road will deliver you
To Dorothy or the Green Witch
You are seeking myriad places and devices
To soften the edges of your pain
Trying to move your distress to a backburner
And expand boundaries of your dreams
Now locked in the silent catacombs of your mind.
How many of us would share a vital organ
A silent prayer
Bargain recklessly with the devil
Explore the fabled Genie’s offer of a wish
Offer a piece of our lives
Do a thousand thousand penances
Walk the hot sands of the outback
That you were now abiding
Comfortable and content
In the kingdom of your room.
The Blessing
It was April
And spring provided a warm embrace
To the flowers and busy streets
In the Castro Hills of San Francisco
The Priest came from Mission Dolores
Journeyed from his very old church
To bless another very young man
Who once had sat with new wine and cigarettes
On his back porch
To view the distant Mission Dolores steeple
Peeking across the rooftops
Balancing on the horizon on his finger.
Two sunsets and sunrises
And cool evenings and warm days passed
As he lay quiet and warm in a hospital room
Whose window surveyed long strips of San Francisco rooftops
He was not wired for heroics
But was immune to pain
I alternately held his large strong hands and surveyed
His lovely broad nose
His brown eyes like his mother’s
Finely chiseled cheek bones
Dark wiry hair much like his mother’s father
Long lanky legs
That once searched narrow streets
In many cities of Europe
He was tall and thin and straight
He was beautiful.
In one crashing moment his eyes revealed
His last soft silent breath was no more
The air was still and silent
The Priest returned with the same blessing
He administered two days before
And now neither God nor man
Could conceive the miracle of life
We who love him so desperately sought.
He received his final blessing
And in turn he leaves us a blessing
With the imprint of his life
On our memory
Within our humanity
He is forever a part of our lives
And in quiet solitary recollections
The soft breath of his spirit
Abides eternally within us.
Heidelberg
There sits Heidelberg on the side of a mountain
Gazing upon the meandering Neckar
People walking and clustering and moving escalator-like
Through thin cobbled stoned streets
That are crocheted in uncertain patterns
Promenading everywhere and nowhere
Impervious to compass bearings
And more rational pedestrian inclinations
They are part of the fabric of the city.
The old city is a kaleidoscope
Of cafes and Hong Kong’ed souvenirs
Kodak signs and stores and kiosks spilling out into the streets
And aging but ageless houses
That were first imagined and built centuries ago
By now silent and ancient craftsmen
With labored diligent hands and keen eyes.
The new part of the city
Like some bastard child
Claims the old city’s name
As it wears its coat of blacktop
Veneered walls of glass and steel
The new and old uncomfortably sharing time and space
As compromising symbiotic neighbors.
The Castle glares down
Above treetops and rooftops
Like a platformed scholar
Peering at the tops of obedient heads
Its towers and buttresses
Jutting chin-like as if to demonstrate
Its now latent power and dominion
Holding an omnipotent eye over the city below.
The castle and chambered walls once echoed
With dreams and joys
The disappointments and agonies
Of kings and cobblers and artisans
We must wonder:
When the castle stones once so carefully
Plumbed and laid
To satisfy the desire of kings
First fell in disarray on broken hearts and bodies
Did king or cobbler cry the loudest?
The Neckar’s waters
Flow between broad banks towards the Rhine
Taking measured care to carve the valleys
To define green contoured hills
And open the womb of the quarries
That gave birth to the stone to build castles.
A millennium ago artisans and dreamers
With careful eyes
And aching backs
Shaped and laid the stone one upon the other
And so the architecture that once lived
In the eye of Michelangelo
And the logic once invented
In the Greek sun
Now lives far from its invention.
Armies inspired by the fear of God
And the fear of man
Whether victor or vanquished
Cried with blood and pain and disdain
To complete the imperfect mathematics
Of man’s invented and defined equations
For victory and defeat
And spilled blood to protect
An idea or a piece of geography or a fools dream.
Shoulder to shoulder we walk the ramparts
And search silent bedrooms and chambers
Where heirs were designed
To fulfill the lineage required
And to pass the sword and cross
And kneel to gods of proper political allegiance.
We wondered with some delight
Of the mischief of kings
That wrote the bloody history
That leaves this imperfect edifice on the mountain side
With buttresses and aged walls and courts
More glorious in their half death.
Heidelberg was our guide and host
We two are benefactors and guests
And our journey is a warm memory.