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Jon Mathewson

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Summer Vacation, 1980

I'm remembering a cab-driver,
may as well call him Virgil,
summer, 1980, Memphis, Tennessee,
seven of us white kids got into his cab,
he asked where we were from
and someone replied, "Vermont,"
and he said, "going to Graceland, huh?"
and we said "yes,"
and he turned off his meter
and he gave us a tour of Memphis,
most of it going over our heads,
something about the blues,
something about jazz,
something about civil rights,
and the motel where the Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr.
was shot one morning
many, many years before.

The driver brought us down
a road paved in gold, and
let us off at the gates to Graceland,
where crowds of tourists milled
past a grave, tokens of flowers and graffiti,
and many wore t-shirts
expressing their concern about
"Who shot J.R. Ewing?"
and five months later John Lennon was shot
but there on that summer day in Memphis
is the cab driver taking a bunch of
white boys from Vermont
and showing them a bouquet of flowers
outside a quiet motel room.

 

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