Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer
than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.
Knows remembers believes a corridor.
—William Faulkner

I live here, not there. I have this life, rather than that. It is indeed arbitrary that these old men touched my life—and not other old men—but the memory of them is strongest and most indelible in the images that I conjure up of them. My mind mirrors the objects that I most strongly associate with them. With Cau, it is the brown suit he never wore to the wedding. With Uncle Joe it was the vodka that both gave him shelter from the memory of Josephine and killed him. With Pop it was the smell of his tar, and with Gramps it was a feeling of benevolence personified by his crackling pipe. It is objects that can define us and give existence and substance to a life that is momentary in the wind.
The only lasting reality of their lives was loneliness.

Cau
Brown suit, the color of opium,
Mekong monsoon brown,
Never worn to the wedding of his granddaughter,
Hung in the closet. She didn't invite him—
He was a wife beater

Gramps
Stack of one-dollar bills neatly wrapped in elastic
Inside the Dutch Masters Panatela box,
Lung cancer, hot cracking smoking pipe tobacco,
Roosevelt Park lake under the terminal ward,
Plastic toyguns in the overcoat for the grandkids
"Don't spoil them, Pop," Mom said to him.

Uncle Joe
Fifth of vodka a day,
Milltown tablets, nervous coffee at nine p.m., withdrawing,
Tampa Bay in the moonlight with Josephine, his ex.
"You'll run best in the rain, kid,"
Forty-eight years old the day he died,
Liver gave out—at least he was over her.

Dad
Asphalt stuck to his flannel shirt,
My head against his chest inahling him,
Bible in his hand with black tar under his nails,
Old schoolhouse roof-tar mop in strong hands that
Hacked a trail for kids through oak and blackberry.