For Bobby

'Babushka' is Russian for 'grandmother'

Often used as a term of endearment

Babushka

Once we laughed together

riding the freight trains from the thick eastern cities

to the wide emptiness of the Colorado rockies and the California ocean

Smoking Bull Durham roll-your-own cigarettes

we were stopped for hitchhiking  in upstate New York

and went to court in the judges house during dinner

Standing there with our long ringlets of hair and Salvation army clothes

while his wife told the children not to be like us

but

I could see the light  of mutual  recognition

as their eyes met mine with smiles and secret sharings

He sent us off to three days in jail and they cut off all our hair

Stuck for three days in the same spot hitchhiking

on route 99 Southern California  desert

knowing or believing

that the moment we didn't worry about getting a ride 

we would get one

(because that moment would last forever)

"Telegraph and Haste, Berkeley!"

you shouted out when we got separated

on the freight trains at Wishram, Washington

on the Columbia River

You headed south on a flatcar 

me watching the train go by

too fast now to jump

And we met there two weeks later

full of stories and laughter

proud of our train dirt and heavy knapsacks

Locked in a boxcar for two days in Willits, California

stranded  off on a siding  

peeing in a plastic bag and shitting  there too

eating  raw  brown rice and sipping tamari

Some kids cutting through the train yards from  school

heard us shouting and let us out

Now

you are a Jehovah's Witness

sad, indrawn, resigned to be a good Christian

resigned to be 'married' to the Lord

not even looking me in the eye when you talk  

except to warn me of my fate

in damnation

I shared my only heavy blanket with you

as we rode that empty boxcar

over Grant's Pass in the winter  

I loved you as my brother

Why do I feel now

that you are so afraid  to live?

Did something scare you?

Was it the time we walked past midnight

late fall on the northern coast of Maine

our feet shuffling  the leaves

We passed softly into dream that night

and fell asleep so deeply

on a pine needle strewn forest bed

that when we woke in the still  early dawn

it seemed

both of us had just been born

and in a golden leafy glory

we looked at each other and cried for joy 

just to be alive

or

Was it all those stars

crowding the sky

on that wild night train out of Salt Lake City

ridin the outside

underneath a piggyback

freezin' and shoutin' out our praise to each other

in the wind

just to keep warm

Or was it your Father

who you always felt sad about

still  mourning  your Mother

sitting  alone in his small  room  

unshaven

in a New York Ghetto

the windows all dirty

Did you become this way for him, somehow?

Because he never looked at the stars any more?

Because he never shared our causeless joy? 

Because he never cried till  he laughed?

Babushka

there are no causes for laughing in your gospel

Babushka we called each other

Babushka I call you now

and I wonder

if I ever really knew you

or we simply spent

some time together