Morningside Drive

Morningside Drive

There are recollections remote
of elemental familiarity, so this slow
walk past where I lived

Some fifty years ago. I know the woods
yet know them not, memory buried
in trees on recessed paths—I must

Have passed this way with Mother
and Father, facades scarcely changed as if
time were nothing; snippets of

Consciousness flowing their separate
course, husband, wife, marriage, work,
joy, sorrow, these in their raft of life

I in mine—the walk winds—canopy of
green in summer, a strange familiarity
for my return to this place I scarcely

remember, yet know in deeper ways of
body sense. I, now twenty years older
than Father was then, the city

cascades like a waterfall—gift
                                                                                       of this place,
                                                                                             memory,
                                                                                            and time.

www.howardgiskin.com/

In 2012 I visited West 122nd Street near Columbia University, where my father did his doctorate, and where I lived with my family from 1962 to 1964. Our apartment was a stone's throw from Grant's Tomb and Morningside Park. The above poem (from my collection Murmurings FriesenPress 2017) is a memory of those years long ago. The photo is of my wife Vicki in front of Grant's Tomb. My father had an interesting story about this monument I'll briefly relate here. He once told me the tomb had fallen into disrepair, until a graduate student in history at Columbia publicised its sorry state, prompting the city to clean and restore it. For some reason I recall this story, of the many memories I have of my father, who passed away in 2015. Sadly, the building where I and my family lived was no more, having been replaced by a twelve-story characterless (but probably more comfortable) residence hall for university faculty and students. The way of the world, alas....