From Tending Sheep to Confusion on the Amtrak 10:50
in memory of Louis Korologosi. The Father
I remember why love starts with a story.
In the long amber days of 1958, I was ten. The
story was part of our family skin, stretched
across our communal body, protecting
all who were inside from incursion.
Your great-grandfather died at the
age of ninety-four while herding sheep,
grazing rock strewn hills in the
olive groves above Tyros.
One night he wandered aimlessly from
the warmth of his mitata,
his thick Greek coffee
still brewing on the iron cooker,
became confused, disoriented,
slipped on the soft edge of a cliff
and fell to his death.
He was found the next day in his
knee high leather leggings
and hand woven cotton tunic
still holding his wooden shepherd's crook in one hand,
in the other, a stained sliver of wood
from the cross on which Christ was crucified.
Sometimes, my Aunts would feel compelled to add,
"he was smiling when they found him."
No account of why he was holding
a shaving from Golgotha, or how it
got there.
It was simply understood in the
same way we accept the
inexplicability of water towers,
built to push water up
so that it can come back down.
It just was.
The story seeped with the intoxicating
aroma of old Bibles and evoked images
of Gnostic hand painted saints
smothering incense.
The story had scent.
We were charismatic.
Our lineage had begun with a piece from God.
Asking who had the sliver of wood now,
or where it was, only produced
mystified stares, raised eyebrows.
We were reminded.
"It was safe, carefully wrapped in red velvet
and wax paper,
stored and sealed in a cedar
box, somewhere in Jersey City."
ii. The Son
At eighty-nine, Uncle Louie, veins
stretching from the shores of Tyros,
now lining the inside of his polyester tunic,
whispered in broken English, hands on my shoulders,
to speak of his shepherd father, reminding me
of my bloodline, his face
a mirror for my heart.
In crisp pumpkin air, he would step
from his house in Jersey City,
stroll through wooly flocks
grazing cement,
cross Atlantic and Clark,
pass under the EL,
enter the station and
board the Amtrak 10:50 to Wilmington.
Strangers would smile watching this slight,
bowed man in his tattered jacket,
frayed cuffs, buttermilk collar,
scuffed brown shoes,
nearly sandals—
a perfect sepia photograph of Diogenes,
strolling Corinth, circa 400 BC, carefully
cut out like a paper doll and pasted
into the snapshot
walking past a crowd gathering
outside Macy's department store.
In the days before Thanksgiving, he would sit
quietly on the train dreaming of ewes,
Ionic and Doric columns lining the
streets of the passing Jersey villages,
an agora breaking through the low clouds.
Under one arm he held cut pieces of brine—
soaked feta wrapped in thick brown
paper, tied neatly, thin white string,
three times around
like a cake box from a baker.
Under the other, between his armpit and elbow,
a fine small wooden
cask of aged kalamata olives
resting in its own oil.
These gifts were to be held closely.
iii. The Holy Ghost
In the days before Thanksgiving, our phone rang.
A stranger was calling from a pay phone
tucked into the corner of the Egg Harbor
station near the ocean.
He had with him, he explained, an old man who had
wandered off the train, spoke of pastures,
did not know where he was.
The old man had smiled, passed
him an aged folded square note
pulled from his wallet.
The stranger had tried to call three times
before realizing that the two sevens
were actually two two's.
My father asked the stranger if he would
take Louie in to the station master, thanked him,
then asked if he would pass Louie the phone.
They spoke quietly for a minute, my father,
intoning kindness and calm.
Smiling, he hung up the phone.
In the days before Thanksgiving,
my father and I talked of
Louie, the son of a shepherd,
standing at the train station in Egg Harbor,
knowing that he was quietly gazing out
across the wine dark Aegean,
standing amid sheep,
waiting for the
Argonauts that would soon cap the horizon,
beach their ship and bring
him home with his treasured gifts of feta and olives.
We set sail at sunset.
