Tucson/my brother's brain

The past few days I've been thinking alot about Tucson,

the city where my grandparents, cousins

and other family have lived.

About the saguaro cactus, Mt. Lemmon hummingbirds

and the White Dove of the Desert,

Mission San Xavier del Bac. My grandfather sketched

and painted the church throughout his life.

My grandmother's piano music, the quaver of her voice

as she sang Alice Blue Gown. Her guest room where I

stayed for awhile after leaving college.

The bar downtown where my cowboy uncle

treated me and my friend to whiskey shots.

The Medical Center, where my brother's

life was saved after the accident

that left part of his brain on a pavement

outside the university's football stadium.

Perhaps it's Tucson that bears some

responsibility for my turning to poetry.

After my brother's accident, I struggled

with the idea of plot.

When the fraternity brothers overstuffed

their cannon at game's end so that it

exploded and shattered, shrapnel

tearing into my brother's brain,

the randomness/ its aftermath/ left me unable

to see story. The construction of a novel,

which I'd thought a calling, seemed impossible.

Then stumbling into poetry, the comfort/excitement

in poets like Olds and Graham.

Why worry about storyline, character development,

cause-effect. Poems could be a container

for the non sequitur fragment,

the fracturing of narrative and family.

How incredible to shed those constraints,

which I wasn't much good at anyway.

My ties to the city are mostly gone,

as relatives have died or moved. I haven't visited

Tucson in years. The last time was with my own

young family. There were bees and big dogs

at my aunt's house. My grandmother sang

to us. The downtown was faded. New

developments and mini malls

sprawling/crowding the cactus, coyotes and

road runners. From Tucson, we headed north

to Phoenix and the Grand Canyon, the Painted

Desert and petrified forest, to Flagstaff and

Lake Powell, and Sedona. We stopped at Orabi

where I bought a pair of silver earrings that had

chips of coral in their watery design.

This isn't in order. I don't recall the map

or how we drove. The kids were in the back

of the small rental separated

by a cooler of food and we drove through high

desert country, went fishing and hiking,

spit into the Grand Canyon, headed back

to Tucson before flying east.

I'm not saying anything about the shooter

and what he did and Tucson and I'm not

connecting my brother's accident

to why I write poetry, which is as much

about lack of endurance as it

is about Tucson or the ocean and how

I'm distractable. Plus I like words more

than sentences sometimes.

There's no narrative thread here.

You know that.