114 DENNIS FINNELL THE FITZSIMMONS FUND Dear Uncle Vern: I bet you had faith in a heavenly racetrack, Not so much one with tall palms as at Santa Anita signaling oasis or even one Where horse and rider communicate to you in trembling earth down the stretch, Not these things because they might be in my idea of heaven, not yours But I bet you counted on a track where you in rolled-up shirtsleeves Could eat a rib eye this thick everyday at The Turf Club Keeping an eye on your winners down below crossing the line between uncertainty and fact, Not always winning, but never losing. After each race three fingers of the best whiskey all around, on you. Thank you very much for your legacy of $714.23. I named it The Fitzsimmons Fund, after you, And use it to rent quiet rooms where I can think of people, like now. The story goes we met once—I was six months old so the “we” is debatable. What’s your take on when someone becomes an “I”? And was I “me” then?— And I so impressed you that you put me in your will? But along with sixteen others? I think of you contemplating life after your end (after Aunt Lucille ended Her good run of goodness—the big birthday card from golden California addressed to “Master . . . ,” A never-folded dollar bill hidden inside the nicest sentiment—and you two childless), You done staring down the finish line, and printed by hand (not Lucille’s nun-taught graceful script) On a sheet of Lucille’s remaining personal stationery your last 115 will & testament as you sat up in the queen-size bed, The estate to be equally cut up among seventeen named beneficiaries (Mine: Mister . . . , son of . . . ) A legacy like yours fleshes out a man and stirs up wonder. Before the $714.23 you were innuendo; Now you travel in a check. Before you were a name, an address, a few conflicting stories (Vern short for LaVern? The former wife? The “tussle” with my dad?); Now you are a monetary action, like Social Security. You made the book for seventeen of us beneficiaries at even odds Because you thought that was fair or because you didn’t know how to be fair And let egalitarianism act in lieu of fairness. Legacies like yours flesh out seventeen people and stir up wonder. $714.23 makes us partners, but in what? I am in a quiet room, thinking. One partner used hers on vodka, a second partner gave hers away to Africa, A third bought a cd getting four percent. It does make you think. Little partnership made cunningly. We are each of us worth $714.23. How say it better? _______ You are not at the track eating rib eye. In paradise a snow of torn-up tickets falls on you, standing At the line forever, drinking beer in a plastic cup, Eating a hot dog, hardly ever winning, as it was and is here. 116 DENNIS FINNELL NOTE TO A SHARD OF THE UNSEEN That manmade (if slaves were men, women) hill south of the capitol That mound of the ostracized broken adjectives Not nouns Not verbs Small slaves whose lives say Gray inky bookish cupped papery earthen gray A mound of ostraca modifying the citizens Noble President Despicable President That Testaccio sinks from the weight of slavery But that’s not you you words without a face Not you who spoke in electrons Not really spoke More like lit up The heart you surrounded inflamed as well And not like Christ’s sacred heart all on fire No there on the classroom wall His face an argument for love His hand raised ready to bless Which is need Where you are now is where you were then No time just different walls floors ceilings and a walking through and between amidst So wonderful ignorance this dusk the heart cooled like a cinder? More like a curled hand says its blessing with a name All you fragments make a rising there is praise there ...