Philadelphia Flowers

In the cubbyhole entrance to Cornell and Son,

a woman in a turquoise sweater

curls up to sleep. Her right arm seeks

a cold spot in the stone to release its worry

and her legs stretch

against the middle hinge.

I want to ask her in for coffee,

to tell her go sleep in the extra bed upstairs,

but I’m a guest,

unaccustomed to this place

where homeless people drift along the square

bordering Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

From her portrait on the mantel,

Lucretia Mott asks when

will Americans see

how all forms of oppression blight

the possibilities of a people.

The passion for preserving Independence Square

should reach this nameless woman, settling

in the heavy heat of August,

exposed to the glare of every passerby.

What makes property so private? A fence?

No trespassing signs? Militia ready to die for it

and taxes? Lights in the middle storeys

of office buildings blaze all night above me.

Newspapers don’t explain how wealth

is bound to these broken people.

North of here, things get really rough.

Longshoremen out of work bet on eddies

in the Schuylkill River.

Factories collapse to weed

and ruptured dream. Years ago, Longhouse sachems

rode canoes to Philadelphia,

entering these red brick halls.

They explained how

the law that kept them unified

required a way to share the wealth.

Inside the hearths of these same halls,

such knowledge was obscured,

and plans were laid to push all Indians ,

west. This city born of brotherly love

still turns around this conflict.

Deeper in the dusk,

William Penn must weep

from his perch on top of City Hall.

Our leaders left this woman in the lurch.

How can there be democracy

without the means to live?

Every fifteen minutes

a patrol car cruises by. I jolt awake

at four a.m. to sirens screeching

and choppers lugging to the hospital heliport

someone who wants to breathe.

The sultry heat leads me

to the window. What matters? This small

square of night sky and two trees

bound by a wide brick wall.

All around, skyscrapers

are telling their stories

under dwindling stars. The girders

remember where Mohawk ironworkers stayed

that day they sat after work

on a balcony, drinking beer.

Below them, a film crew caught

some commercials. In another room above

a mattress caught fire and someone flung it

down into the frame. A woman in blue

sashayed up the street

while a flaming mattress,

falling at the same speed as a flower,

bloomed over her left shoulder.

Every fifteen minutes

a patrol car cruises by. The men inside

mean business. They understood the scene.

A mattress burning in the street

and business deadlocked. Mohawks

drinking beer above it all.

They radioed insurrection,

drew their guns, then three-stepped

up the stairs. Film crews caught the scene,

but it never played. The Mohawks

didn’t guess a swat team had moved in.

When policemen blasted off their door,

the terrified men shoved a table

against the splintered frame.

They fought it out.

One whose name meant Deer got shot

again and again. They let him lie

before they dragged him by his heels

down four flights of stairs. At every step,

he hurdled above his pain

until one final leap

gained him the stars.

The news reported one cop broke his leg.

The film’s been banished to a vault. There are

no plaques. But girders whisper at night

in Philadelphia. They know the boarding house,

but will not say. They know as well what lasts

and what falls down.

III

Passing Doric colonnades of banks

and walls of dark glass,

passing press-the-button-visitors-please

Liberty Townhouses, I turned

up Broad Street near the Hershey Hotel

and headed toward the doorman

outside the Bellevue. Palms and chandeliers inside.

A woman in mauve silk and pearls stepped into the street.

I was tracking my Mohawk grandmother

through time. She left a trace

of her belief somewhere near Locust and Thirteenth.

I didn’t see you, tall, dark, intense,

with three bouquets of flowers in your hand.

On Walnut and Broad, between the Union League

and the Indian Campsite, you stopped me,

shoving flowers toward my arm.

“At least, I’m not begging,” you cried.

The desperation in your voice

spiraled through my feet while I fumbled the few bucks

you asked for. I wanted those flowers—

iris, ageratum, goldenrod and lilies—

because in desperation

you thought of beauty. I recognized

the truth and human love you acted on,

your despair echoing my own.

Forgive me. I should have bought more

of those Philadelphia flowers, passed hand

to hand so quickly, I was stunned a block away.

You had to keep your pride, as I have done,

selling these bouquets of poems

to anyone who’ll take them. After our exchange,

grandmother’s tracks grew clearer.

I returned for days, but you were never there.

If you see her — small, dark, intense,

with a bun of black hair and the gaze of an orphan,

leave a petal in my path.

Then I’ll know I can go on.

Some days you get angry enough

to question. There’s a plan out east

with a multitude of charts and diagrams.

They planned to take the timber, the good soil.

Even now, they demolish mountains.

Next they’ll want the water and the air.

I tell you they’re planning to leave our reservations

bare of life. They plan to dump their toxic

wastes on our grandchildren. No one wants to say

how hard they’ve worked a hundred years.

What of you, learning how this continent’s

getting angry? Do you consider what’s in store for you?

Source: Philadelphia Flowers (Holy Cow! Press, 1996)