The Power of Testimony

THE TIME MOM MET HITLER . . .
sinking. And now they hear . . . is that the falls? It is!
And now the falls are closer. And no one knows where
they are. Faster the river runs, and faster. The falls are a
roar. The ice cake whirls. Then, just at the penultimate
moment, the boys spy a tree branch hanging low across
the stream. Can they make it? Frantic work with the
useless oars. Closer. Closer. The falls are a death trap
about to snap closed. The boys crouch. They spring.
They clasp. They sway. The ice cake disappears in a
rumble of destruction. And there are the boys hanging
by their armpits, shuffling sideways, immortal.
Ah, the thrill! And it might have happened. One can never really
be sure with poets.
* * *
My mother found an attractive, frontier, Tom Sawyer–​ ish quality
in Dad’s tales of his Minnesota youth. Of course when Dad was
young, the unfenced prairie no longer stretched from southern
Minnesota all the way to the Rockies. But Mom, who grew up in
cultured surroundings in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was nonetheless
thrilled with Dad’s vicarious touches of the Wild West.
My mother was a woman who loved to sing her way around
the house as she swept and cooked, and a particular favorite
was Bing Crosby’s hit “Don’t Fence Me In.” She and I would
do the song together in the kitchen as she prepared onions, a
slice emphasizing the end of each line—
I want to ride to the ridge where the West commences [slice]
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses [slice]
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