I remember the narrow aisles in Grant Junior High’s library, the musty smell of the books, and the row of worn hardcover books by you. At night, I’d curl up in my bed, the words barely readable by the dim light over the stairs. I followed Pip on his escape from his abusive sister, David fleeing a filthy factory to find his aunt, and Oliver’s escape from the workhouse. Downstairs, my father was sound asleep in his reclining chair after a long day at work, and then coming home to the four of us. In your books, those who were poor had it much worse off than we did, and those with wealth and power often used it against others who were less fortunate, like Miss Havisham, a wealthy spinster who was still wearing her wedding dress many years after her fiancé abandoned her on her wedding day. For most of her life, she plotted revenge against men. I wonder how many girls grew up frightened of not finding a husband, of becoming a spinster like Miss Havisham. The men in my life were never my ruination. Even though you were a great writer who advocated for the poor and victimized, you must have been a disaster for Mrs. Dickens, trapped as she was with ten children and a husband who also had a young mistress. Mrs. Dickens didn’t retaliate when in your pursuit of a separation, you slandered her in public. Perhaps she had no venue for retaliation. A little over a century later, and across the Atlantic, as a young woman, I was thankful to the feminists who fought for birth control and women’s rights.

Your voice lifted right off the page and took me along with you and Jim on your journey down the Mississippi. I was about ten or eleven years old when I first read your story. My copy of Huckleberry Finn was very worn, the spine loose and falling open. My great grandfather had left me a set of Twain’s books, and my grandmother’s eight children must have read it over and over. After my mother died, I marked off days in my calendar until I could leave home. Maybe that’s why I admired you, a boy who could take off and free himself from an abusive father, and at the same time help Jim escape a slave owner who was going to sell him down the river. I had never yet met a black man, but I knew about slavery and my mother had taught me that racism was the opposite of love. When I reread now, I am very worried about Jim because he was depending on you—a child—for his life and freedom. After you two were separated by a fast current and in a thick fog, you fell asleep in the canoe. Upon waking, you spotted Jim down current on the raft. He thought you had drowned, and he was relieved to see you. “Lemme look at you, chile, lemme feel o’you.” Jim always looked after you, like a father, like family, and as you drifted southward, you and he became closer, and no matter what anyone said, you decided you’d help him escape. When he was captured and you went ashore looking for him, for some reason, Twain changed your character, dramatically. You endangered Jim by going along with Tom Sawyer’s ridiculous plans. Where was the sharp back woods kid who knew how to take care of business? When Tom finally confesses that Jim’s mistress had in fact freed him on her deathbed—after all his shenanigans—you realize that he’d used you and Jim for the sake of a smart ass childish adventure. Then in the end Twain ties everything together like in a Victorian novel. All is well here in the world of slavery, but we know all was not well. What I liked best about Huckleberry Finn, and what I remember liking as a child, was the way you and Jim took care of each other when you were out on the river.

We were part of a small group of poet-friends in the grad program at Wayne State. We read our poetry together twice on WDET. I still have the tapes. One day, on my way to class, I was walking along Cass Avenue. You were standing on the corner by Old Main. What are you doing? I asked. “I’m trying to decide if I want to go to George’s Diner or home to make breakfast.” “Go to George’s!” I said, laughing. Once we came back to my apartment after a party and while listening to music, we started dancing together. It was very romantic, but then the next day we went on as usual, never speaking about it. On New Years Day evening in ’84 there was a lot of snow, maybe half a foot or more. We went out looking for a place to have dinner and say goodbye. The next morning, I was moving to New York City. We drove around the university area and then downtown where we finally found a diner. On our way home, I turned the car onto a street with no cars, no people, and up ahead there was a black shape, a man in a wheelchair stuck in the snow. I tried to talk you out of leaving the car. No one else in sight. Sometimes we are aware of the way every turn we take has consequences. This was a dangerous area. I was worried you’d be robbed or killed. He might freeze to death, you said. I drove close behind while you maneuvered the chair through the heavy snow, leaving him several blocks later at a burlesque on Woodward Avenue. When you were getting married, I flew in for your wedding. Soon after, you moved to St. Louis for a teaching position. We wrote to each other for about a year, and even though we promised to stay in touch, only a few times over the years have we talked or written. Recently, I was reading your letters and, in '84, you mentioned you had been thinking about me and that night in my apartment when we danced together.

Shortly after I moved from Detroit to New York, I took a job at Legal Aid Society, editing a newsletter for Juvenile Rights. You were a law student working in their library. We liked some of the same music, and like me, you used to hang out in the East Village. You had one of those illegal apartments on John Street, once an office, now an apartment with the bathroom down the hall. We’d talk about books and politics. When Linnée and Mook finished the school year in Detroit, Allen brought them to me in Brooklyn. Sometimes they’d come to work with me. You were playful with them. You came to visit us in our apartment once. I remember you walking up 8th Avenue carrying a package with things for the kids and food, too. After that, I got a new job, and you reunited with your girlfriend. We didn’t see each other again for many years until an out-of-town friend of my son was arrested for lighting up a joint in Washington Square. I went down to Central Booking with Mook and his friends looking for the boy. While walking through the doors, we passed you. “Peter!” I shouted. You were wearing a suit. You were a lawyer now consulting with a client. You gave us some advice on how to find him. Then off we went, light and cheery, saying goodbye without thinking about the fact that we might never cross paths again. And so far, we haven’t.

You were born at home. An easy baby, I’d sing to you—Michah Maaka Mooka. I’d zip you up in a onesie, put piles of toys and kitchen utensils in the corners. Even before you could crawl, you’d slide over the slick wood floors from corner to corner occupying yourself while I was cooking, and Née and her friends were running through the house. I remember lying beside you, inventing stories about a little boy who went on wild adventures in the city and all over the world. I remember typing while you stood beside me making up your own stories. When your second-grade teacher wouldn’t let you write your words on your Mother’s Day card, I moved you to another school. When Allen and I decided to share a big house on Beverly Road, you were elated. For your fifth birthday, I bought you two My Pet Monsters and you set them up in your bed as guards. I bought a color tv to help Née babysit for you. One afternoon when I came home to “Nightmare on Elm Street” on the TV. I was frightened, ran out of the room, and you two laughed at me. Now you say you were scared, and you started hiding a knife under your pillow. Allen took you to the barber for a short cut with a very hip little rat tail. I loved watching you surf down 7th Avenue on your skateboard. At my brother’s wedding, the family still talks about you break dancing. Once when I was crying about my father, you looked at me and calmly said, “Mom, he loves you. He just doesn’t know how to show it.” You used to glide like a dancer across the school gym and then casually drop the ball into the basket. The guys at Dixon’s Bike Shop had a reggae band and they used to practice in a garage on Union Street. A few times they let you jam with them. You’ve been playing guitar and piano ever since. When one of your friends had a bad trip on LSD, you insisted you had to get away from New York. Humanities wasn’t the right school for you. You stayed in the UP with my sister and went to school out in the sticks. You were in the jazz band and chess club. I sent you my manual typewriter. Your teacher told me you were very cosmopolitan.

Back in the city, you finished high school at City as School in the West village, doing internships in the museums and on the streets. You used to play chess in Washington Square and at the Chess Shop on Thompson Street. After Dad died, you went to Japan as part of Friend’s World College. When you and your girlfriend broke up, you did a ten-day vipassana in Kyoto and then came home, took classes in music and philosophy at LIU and worked at Jivamukti in trade for yoga. In Costa Rica, you learned a lot in the small poker rooms in San José and Manuel Antonio. After a short sprint with the poker clubs in Manhattan, making a lot of money and then almost losing the apartment you’d grown up in, you painted, plastered and learned how to repair old houses, and you got the money back in the bank just in time. While riding a motorcycle from Bangalore to Mysore, you were hit by a bus, your leg broken in two places. When you came to, you told me on the phone you’d been dreaming about Née and me. On crutches, you traveled by third class train to the Kumba Mela and then onward to Varanasi. We stayed together in Mysore for a year, and your Hindi was good enough to argue with the rickshaw drivers. Back in New York you documented street and subway life in photos. As the photographer for Battery Park Conservancy, you covered their summer music events, like Sun Ra Arkestra. When you and your wife Rie had photos in a gallery in the East Village, I remember walking down the street after the opening, watching you two laugh and tease each other. You were happy together. When you were a young teen, my friend Michael introduced you to chess. Now you go from school to school, teaching classes and running tournaments. While walking down the street from the Poet’s House, one day, I looked up at a poster in a window with your photo—“Come and practice chess with our much-loved teacher, Michah.” When Rie took her own life during the pandemic, Née and I were very worried about you. You painted every wall in your apartment. You quit alcohol and tobacco, and you took up yoga instead. You started to travel again, to Costa Rica and Peru for ayahuasca, for yoga, to heal and to change. When I moved out west, you helped me, driving a big U-Haul truck across the desert from Santa Fe to Tucson, and I followed along behind you in the car. My yogic guide, Shankaranarayana once said to me, “The energy between child and parent is very strong whether they are on opposite sides of the planet or one is dead and the other alive.” Now we live only a few blocks apart in Brooklyn. When I need help changing a light bulb, a ride somewhere or something more serious, you are there for me, just as I am there for you and will be for as long as possible, and maybe even beyond.

The lights dimmed, you played a few chords, and then I turned to the audience. Breathe slowly, I told myself, but little by little the pace of my reading began to speed up—it is kind of a speedy breathless poem. I could feel you playing behind me. With a Bang, the music moved faster and faster, becoming more intense —the next generation—leans over a keyboard—riffs, breaks, runs—his body hunched—fingers flying—30 miles an hour—all at once—released—the seeds spin outward—the bird flutters into the air— I sat back on the stool, and you skimmed the keyboard—riffs, breaks, runs—fingers flying, energy zipping between us and then softly you came to a stop and looked up at me. I began reading —“On the Q”—this is canal street—the Brooklyn Bridge—the western sun—a golden hue—a six foot three inch—Justinian cross—over the World Trade Center—young adults—brought here as children—soon sent—to places they never knew—Written ten years earlier, but everywhere today ICE and the people ripped away from their families and homes—to places they never knew—Back on the stool, I watched and listened to you piano-talk to the beauty in that funky subway car, to the lost and the found. You nodded and I came back to the mic and started to speak of our friend David Snow, how he and Paul Lichter once opened Cafe No in Portland, poets and musicians came from all over the country. . . you were tall . . . skinny and tattooed, David . . . you always let . . . Allen and me . . . There you are. . . with your friend . . . the Bronx Bar . . . You look so young . . . Behind my voice, an electronic composition you made weeks earlier of my words and phrases, like language fragments drifting out of some universal mind. Over the keyboard, you leaned forward, gently touching the keys, then thundering, then quiet, emotionally involved, I thought, with the living life and loss of David. A soft reminder from Yogi Nevine, with the new cruelty, the new regime, whatever difficulties arrive—the goal in life—should be joy—Buck up— says Charles Blow—it’s over—the bully’s in the white house—for the time being—alt right is not—a computer command—they’re a batch of fanatical racists—Nevine echoes back—like a String Ball—defeat in life—is bitterness—if we keep going around—in the same direction—we will surely unravel— You on the piano, me at the mic—We Wait—and wait for the wild power of nature—Om Nama Shivaya—anything—could happen—every day when I hit—the sidewalk—I think—it will never end—and yet—slowly and surely—the temperature will rise—and the might and mystery—of the cold wind—will surely spread—Shiva—Brahma—Narayana—their seeds everywhere— Then piano-thunder. Then silence. The air surrounded us. You turned toward me. I turned toward the mic and began to read, “Out of Harm’s Way,” for Allen Saperstein, lover, friend, father of my children. Sound vibrates through every molecule of my body

the ocean lies down and then pulls back, stunning
while you were wretched and yellow, we played
while you were bruised and muffled, Louie Armstrong
sang O What a Wonderful World. This afternoon
there’s too much black seaweed afloat for swimming
I love it though when the moon is translucent like that
I love it though

When we walked away from the stage, Frank, I said, “I was reading to you,” and you said you were playing for me. When we left Portland, you went to Boston for a gig, and when I came back to Brooklyn, a friend asked me, “How was Portland?” I tried to explain about piano-poem(ing) in a jazz conversation. I wanted to hold on to the feeling, the experience, but the only way I knew to do that was to write about it. Thank you, Frank, for directing our performance and playing the piano so beautifully. I bow to you. Om Nama Shivaya—