I

There we were, the two of us

Free again like first semester freshman year,

Free in the city, free

For the weekend, free from our lives.

With the city open, 

With its constellation of lights,

The Boston skyline beckoned, in the air

Briny waves of beer, seafood, seagulls, and the sorrowful joys of graduation.

With long strides 

We walked into Faneuil Hall, 

Walked into an unseasonably warm May night,

Walked into being nineteen again,

When possibilities glittered around us 

Like a string of lights connected to the crowds, 

Encircled by friends upon friends 

And every direction was somewhere we wanted to go. 

Going, we went to Fenway,

Making our way to the T,

Everything was the same,

Same Government Center,

Same green and brown tiles,

Same musty stale warm air

Blowing up from the station,

Same trolleys, same accordion doors on the trains,

Same grinding, squeaking wheels on the track, 

Same ground-level platform where we passed out on the benches, 

Same howling under the fluorescent lights, 

Same iridescent delusions and drink.

We came out at Kenmore Square,

Broad curving space like a stage set,

Memories double-exposed over where the Pizza Pad,

The Rathskellar and the Barnes and Noble used to be.

We merged into streams of Red Sox hats and jerseys,

Flowing up Brookline Avenue, crossing Commonwealth Avenue,

Sidewalks packed, pot smoke passing through us like ghosts,

Carried along a river of fans entering the great returning.

The broad structure of Fenway revealed itself

Like happening upon the Collusium

Down the Via Dei Serpenti;

A drift of sparrows flitted over Newbury Street,

Championship flags fluttered in the wind,

The wind, mercifully calm, 

Like a napping drunkard, 

Waiting until the cold to turn mean.

Walking through turnstiles,

Through vaulted brick arches,

Through tunnels of monster green under the stands, 

To our seats between home plate and first base.

The panorama of Fenway unfurled 

Like a scripture scroll, arc of fans

Stretching around the infield, scholars of the game studying 

The layered sounds and smells, 

The awe of the open space, 

The hallowed brown of the dirt,

The purity and rationalism of the white baselines,

The supernatural cross-hatching greens of the outfield,

Like playing a game in a cemetery,

Bases like grave markers,

Ghosts in the infield,

By turns sacred, by turns profane,

Observing the mechanics of the universe,

The secret language signaling from third to home,

The secret machinations of the bullpen,

Oriented towards greater things in this world.

II

The game let out, and we walked down Beacon Street,

Stood on the corner of Park Drive

And stared up at our old apartment buildings,

Our first real apartments off campus.

Remembering the September sun

All those years ago, the warm glow

Of being on our own, the music

Of our twenty-year-old voices

Mixing together in the swirl and twinkle lights

Of apartment living, voices 

Carrying the songs of a lost world,

Voices laughing.

Walking up Park Drive, we crossed Beacon Street,

Over St. Mary’s Bridge and onto the main campus,

T’s rumbled along passed each other,

Dinging as they crossed over the intersections in front of Marsh Chapel.

Commonwealth Avenue spread out before us

Like a little world from 1957, subversive poets smoking

In sport jackets and ties with movie star eyes,

And depressive brains behind smart-looking glasses.

We turned right and walked over to the Dug Out,

Downstairs to the main bar, found a small

Golden table tucked in a bay window

And clinked our glasses of beer.

He adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses

On his large intellectual nose, 

Inhaling the intellectual vapors

Of the bar and proposed a question;

I inhaled a swig of beer

And before I could swallow or answer,

A cough erupted from my lungs

And the beer sprayed across his wire-rimmed glasses and large intellectual nose.

Stunned silence

As the question hung in the air

And I sheepishly gathered paper towels

Cleaning the table and his beer-splattered face.

He cleaned his glasses,

Looked up smiling mischievously and 

We both knew,

We were back.

Back from the world of personas

Where we are thrown daily into monstrous chasms,

Falling through failure, falling 

From one uncomfortable dimension to another,

Back in the full bloom of senior year,

In the garden of our youth, in the paradise of an old friend,

Back to the glittering possibilities of the city,

Back to the question;

Of course, the universe folds back on itself

Like a saddle, like memory.

Of course, there are multiple universes,

Each exactly the same except for the color of our eyes.

And yes, the eyes of every beautiful woman

Are a portal to a glamorous life,

And yes, all civilization is just a moment in time,

Like our childhoods.

But the end of every friendship is a death,

Sometimes the death is a catastrophe, like the collapse of a civilization,

Sometimes the death is part of an unmarked mass grave, 

Where memory is a disembodied ghost, living homeless in an underworld of neglect.

Sometimes the death haunts us like a lost wallet,

Wandering the city in a futile search for honesty,

Where we mourn the loss of cancelling the credit cards

But then move on with our lives the next day.

III

Leaving the Dug Out

Into the perfect Boston night air,

Chatting with smokers

On the sidewalk.

Smoke clouds floated into traffic on Comm Ave,

Split in half by passing cars,

Then trespassed through the metal fence

Next to the T tracks.

Smoke clouds diffused the floodlights 

On the corner of Warren Towers,

Like the hazy stratos of smoke clouds 

Filling dorm rooms on the seventeenth floor,

Walking down Commonwealth

Passed the glass entrance and X-shaped escalators,

Passed the convenience store

Where I bought my first pack of cigarettes,

Looking up to the windows,

Where we gazed out as Nor’Eastors

Blanketed the city in snow

And we listened to Cottontail by Ella Fitzgerald

And spoke of absolutes 

While playing hearts,

And flinched to the sound

Of a chair breaking a window.

Opening the door to the room,

Seeing the jagged shards still hanging

Within the window frame,

The warm May city wind blowing in.

The pale blue ghost faces of those who saw him 

Turn back in a flash of determined bloodshot black eyes,

Run across the bed, over the desk, and jump

Through the open window.

Peering through the transom, through broken panes,

To the flood lights illuminating his body, on the roof of the garage, fourteen floors below,

Wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with two red spots soaked through

Where his lungs used to be.

Close to where we were 

Continuing on Commonwealth

Passed the Metcalf Science Center,

Where the sculpture of electrons colliding still stands,

To 580 Commonwealth Avenue

Where the T flows underground,

Just before Commonwealth merges with Beacon

Back into Kenmore Square.

This was where it all ended,

Where campus faded into the streets

And the city began,

Where we said our goodbyes

To sacred bonds scattered from a farewell,

To tender remembrances

Summoning ancient voices to return,

To the end we didn’t know was the end until it all ended.