If By Chance There Is Memory in Your Slumber

In sleep, do you slip-slide back 
recall me, your blue-eyed daughter
fine brown hair braided, ribboned.

While you drift 
are you back in the red brick house
peeling parsnips, plucking chicken
lighting Friday night candles —
or are you a child yourself, clutching tightly
to your own mother’s firm warm hand.

I enter your narrow bedroom
glimpse the hills of your body
under the blue flowered afghan,
your snow-white hair matted, tousled.
You stir, utter sounds I can’t unravel.
It’s been a year since we last spoke.

I settle myself comfortably
on the padded rocker,
gaze out the window at the gray sky,
listen to thunderstorms pummel the roof,
throaty black crows in the yard 
flapping, cawing.

Where do you go when your eyes close?
Is your mind the empty slate 
that greets you upon wakening.
Or if by chance
there is memory in your slumber,
I wish you, my darling Mother,
the sweetest of dreams.

That Certain Blue

photo: Keith Munson

Ensemble

The diners 
are passionately
devouring —
but it is the cook

peeking 
through swinging doors
who feels
the fullness

of roasted duck
in plum sauce,
a generous man

softly swinging
his wooden spoon,
like a conductor

at the helm 
of woodwind and brass.

That Certain Blue

Full Throttle

Southbound I-5
we tear into the fast lane
pass fields, winter drab
sheep in pastures, mud splattered,
Century farms, dormant, set back.

Chuck Berry’s voice spills 
from Classic Rock Station
KJMX, 99.5 FM.
I move to the music, seat belt straining
fingers strumming, singing along —
you, loving the driving
the open road
freedom of a fast car 
turn up the volume.

We pass nurseries closed for the season,
flocks of Trumpeter Swans overhead,
newborn lambs on grassy slopes
shakily bent toward their mothers.

Sliding close on the bench seat 
I slip off my shoes
rub the smooth burnished leather 
of your freshly polished cowboy boots.

Meadowlands give way
to rugged hilly terrain.
We weave our way up the mountain

traveling the highway, visibility clear
throttle up.

That Certain Blue

Table Manners

Aunt Rose serves baked ham for dinner
unfamiliar pink meat
topped with pineapple and brown sugar.

We sit in the silent dinette
eyes downcast, fingering stitching 
on the green damask cloth on our laps.
My father’s face, turned.
Mother’s lips, pursed.

I listen for the roar from above.
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
God of sliced brisket and pickled whitefish
God of stuffed kishke and noodle kugel
God of two sets of dishes, milchike and flaishig
God of Sunday morning brunches
creamed herring, cheese blintzes, dairy dinners.

I move pieces of ham around my plate 
like knights on a checker-board
slip them under mounds of potatoes
wondering if God, like me
plays at being polite.

          Stillness Settles Down the Lane

Only the Names Remain

Mozart’s Magic Flute 
floats through open windows.
Children chant Leansies-Clapsies, jump rope.
Mothers walk two blocks for a loaf of Silvercup.
Milk is delivered three times a week
through milk chutes by side doors.
On Tuesdays the egg lady from Novi
provides fresh Rhode Island browns.

Time transforms —
butterfly into caterpillar.
Burlingame Avenue is spent
and with it, the neighborhood.
Those tranquil blocks of red brick
single-family homes, four-family flats
are crumbling or burnt down.
Only the names remain the same
Tuxedo, Glenwood, Webb.

Beth Shalom becomes Calvert Baptist.
Nate’s Deli on Linwood, sits abandoned.
You can pawn through back doors
Great-Aunt Tessie’s silver service
or a stolen forty-five.
The Avalon Theater, when Saturday’s
double features ran from twelve to four,
cradles an empty lot.

Boarded up and fearful
Haney’s Ice Cream Shop, where for a dime
a single scoop overflowed its cone, lies empty.
Its windows papered over, neon smashed
graffiti sprayed in coal and red.

Why Detroit?  But it was lovely.

Cops cruise Dexter Avenue in black and white.
Crack sells in alleyways behind Jay Wilson’s old apartment.
Children die, gunned down before their thirteenth birthday.
The shadows we grasp, those fragile memories
like Mozart’s melodies on quiet Sunday mornings
fade and disappear.

          Stillness Settles Down the Lane