Alberto

This is kind of random, but here's a poem I wrote when we were living in Santiago, Chile, in 1997. I was teaching English at the Instituto Chileno Norteamericano, and Alberto was one of my students. I took my camera to class one Wednesday to take a picture, but one of the students (a former Miss Chile--more randomness) was absent. I decided to just take my camera back on Friday so everyone could be in the picture together. When we got to class on Friday, they informed us that Alberto had died of a brain aneurism on Thursday. We carpooled over to the cathedral where they had somehow already made all the arrangements and were having the visitation. I wasn't nearly as cool as my students, who already had cell phones in 1997. And I was only second-hand smoking. But this was the experience we had together that night.

I would add a photo of Alberto below the poem if only I had one. There was something child-like about him, about his laugh, about his smile. He had a kind of innocent abandon and was always making us laugh. He still lived with his mother, and he tried to be a good son, a good boy. Rest in peace, Alberto.

~ Alberto

Alberto was in a casket                                                                                           

and the rest of us were outside                                                                             

smoking and answering calls

as the news spread.

Wednesday he’d done things like

pick up his laundry, go to work, turn 33.

For that matter, Wednesday he’d been laughing,

and we’d laughed, too, all of us,

because Alberto was funny—

funny wide-eyed,

funny nothing-to-lose.

It was a sidewalk death,

the kind where one minute

you’re walking down it with everyone else

and the next minute

they’re the ones calling an ambulance

and you’re the one being rolled onto your back.

He was gentle, Alberto was,

so God did it quick

like yanking a band-aid.

You can look at a friend under glass

for only so long

when other people are waiting,

so we circled the courtyard

of the orange stucco cathedral

in the twilight.

It was time to go, anyway,

so we all left together

when the last of the swallows

dropped into the bell tower like stones.

I could have shared a ride but

I was restless and, like a kamikaze,

took the sidewalk.