Goodbye means different things

Two of my poems are posted in Boston City Hall (by the south elevator on the 2nd floor). Boston is celebrating its 375th birthday this year, and 375 items of art and poetry were selected from 1200 Boston artists. If you are a Bostonian or nearby, it is worth the trip to city hall to look at and read this stuff. Fantastic photographs, great paintings, nice poems and essays. All of Boston. Due to a missed email or whatever, my poems weren't posted at first, and then finally were. So there they are on the wall and the people waiting for an elevator either read them or not.

Then something touching happened.

A woman called and wanted a copy of one of the poems, because it reminded her so much of her late father and all the good times they had in the locales I mentioned.

Of course I said, yes. This poem was written on the occasion of the company I worked for leaving Kendall Square for the 'burbs. No more public transportation, no more choice of lunch places, no more cool walks at noon or staying in town for a meal or a movie or scooting down to Harvard for a lecture or even a class. No more. No more. So this was a goodbye to a place, not a person, but I guess it works for both.

Poem is below.

Goodbye

I said goodbye to the river
Where the sculls slice the water in the pre-dawn.

I said goodbye to the seasons of the river
The willows in spring, creeping from yellow to green
The water glassy and unperturbed in August's dog days
Choppy in the coarse winds of autumn
Gelid in January.

I said goodbye to the mysteries of the river
Flowing swift and oily in the dark,
Nourisher of cormorants and carp, herring and gulls,
Spanned by stone bridges that arch
Above the darting, tacking flotilla of sailboats.

I said goodbye to the city
Fabulous construct of stone and steel rising over the river.
Goodbye to statues and parks, gardens and boulevards
Glitz and grime. Goodbye. Goodbye.

I said goodbye to the Squares.
Goodbye, Kendall.
You're a clean well-lighted plaza, pulsing and bustling,
A re-gentrification of nobelists and nerds,
Intellect and pragmatism rubbing shoulders,
While green herons fish in the Broad Canal.
The mystique of Lotus Notes and
The ghost of the 'F & T' will endure.
A long ago goodbye to Vinnie's place
And the counterman who refused mustard on a meatball sub.
Goodbye Kendall.

Goodbye to Central,
Funky, ethnic, down and dirty.
Goodbye to falafel and franks, curry and catfish,
Farmers markets, stores where nothing costs more than a buck.
Goodbye, some might wave good riddance to radical politics,
and sleazy bars, but the world needs a little decadence.
The world needs Cantabs.
Goodbye to all that, Central.

Goodbye Harvard.
Farewell to wine bars and street musicians,
Au revoir your shady yard, the newsstands
The bookstores and Tory Row and all the places
George Washington slept.
Adieu to making the scene and hanging out.
Alas, Harvard.

I say I'll come back to visit.
Well, maybe. Promises are cheap, you know,
And the road to hell is paved with pledges.
Goodbye is sorrow, not sweet, but lying like a lump.
Goodbye is hard.