Apology

When I decided to move North 
one foot planted its shoe firmly in dirt
 like a stubborn father and asked 
for further direction, 
forward not being a place it understood. 
A tamer of mules, I quickly convinced 
my reticent body to accept everything. 
My head arrived first, stiff-tongued, 
anxious to taste salt mines, hungry 
for newspaper promises 
wrapped around day-old bread. 
There was reason to believe my first child 
would be able to read them, 
that I would earn the fried eggs of the wealthy, 
that the Lincoln Brigade would be my neighbors, 
guest speakers at the union local. 
The meal was created from everything, 
a generation dependent on cold milk and television, 
yearning for the memorabilia of hunger: 
peasant soup with meat added, 
Spanish olives from a gourmet shop in Chelsea, 
a ration of bread whenever desired. 
Money to pour out of bottles 
and into the battle scenes engraved on a marble table 
have bought me a barely noticed hollow in a hospital bed, 
a legacy spoken by a forgetful priest at my closing 
in a language I don't understand 
and the name chosen by my tired mother, 
mispronounced or changed across waters. 
But my canary remained quiet in spite of danger 
so that I would not avoid it, 
and the woman who lifted me from the kitchen floor 
when my heart sang like an idiot in flames, 
passes a cloth gently over my picture. 
I have not earned the quiet certainty 
that dirt placed over a body must give, 
my temples tremble when my children speak of me.