Philadelphia Flowers

I 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? II 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. IV 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?