Hospital Corners

This is a letter to the man who lashed out
at me in Cutler, Maine in 1966
for my association with Black people.
Do you still hate me, White, like you,
for shooting pool, riding in automobiles,
and eating in restaurants with people
whose skin was darker than ours?
Was it fear rather than hatred that day
in the barracks with the made top
and bottom bunks with hospital corners
that made your clenched fists ache
to hit me? Do you still feel the same,
back in the South you came from? Up North
I met people like you. But I’ll never forget
how you looked and sounded? Were we
to meet again, if you let me, I’d tell you
of a table near a wall in a hospital cafeteria,
a small table and Manav, across from me,
saying he’d taken his son and daughter
to an amusement park that past weekend,
on a roller coaster. No one stopped them
from riding because of their dark skin. They
were Hindu. I’d tell you how good I felt
when he came over sat across from me,
that, save for Manav, who knew everyone
there, I would have been alone. I’d tell you
of Merch, a business person from Pakistan,
who, when Manav said, “I’m just a nurse
practitioner,” told him, “You’re my doctor.”
I’d tell you how eloquently his daughter spoke
at the service in the Presbyterian church that
accommodated all who remembered Manav.
He walked out his door, out to his mailbox
and there his life ended. When I see you
I see a gray blanket’s tucked hospital corner,
a double bunk bed, your ice-blue eyes.