When Paul wrote You and I
have memories longer
than the road that stretches
out ahead, the Beatle
couldn’t have known how true
that line was, his best friend
one decade later shot
dead. That’s where my mind goes
for just a split second
as my wife and I join
along in the car. We’re
harmonizing like Paul
and John. She is flaring
the high notes out over
my lower line, her voice
suspended like a felt
halo fastened to my
thin black wire. “Two Of Us,”
always the first tune clicked
in the car stereo
for a road trip drive home,
our happiness cranked up
with the volume, as if
the weightlessness of on
our way back home maybe
would carry us unharmed.
Then I think how foolish
we have been to believe
the lie that refrain is,
how one of us will be
left alone, years winding
out into nothingness
like a country back road,
one person still trying
to steer the pitch steady,
knowing deep down, without
the other one to hold
things up, the words will ache
and just get hung about
like the vague plans we make
as the song fades out, no
obvious ending, no
way to resolve itself.
–
Robert Fillman is the author of House Bird (Terrapin, 2022) and November Weather Spell (Main Street Rag, 2019). Individual poems have appeared in such venues as The Hollins Critic, Poetry East, Salamander, Spoon River Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, and Verse Daily. He teaches at Kutztown University in eastern Pennsylvania.
© 2023, Robert Fillman
Halfway Down the Stairs 