Poems: Breath

The LessonEarly in the final industrial centuryon the street where I was born liveda doctor who smoked black shagand walked his dog each morningas he muttered to himself in a languageonly the dog knew. The doctor had saved my brother’s life, the story went, reachedtwo stained fingers down his throatto extract a chicken bone and thenbowed to kiss the ring–encrusted handof my beautiful mother, a young widowon the lookout for a professional.Years before, before the invention of smog, before Fluid Drive, the eight-hour day,the iron lung, I'd come into the worldin a shower of industrial filth rainingfrom the bruised sky above Detroit. Time did not stop. Mother marrieda bland wizard in clutch platesand drive shafts. My uncles went offto their world wars, and I began a career in root vegetables. Each morning,just as the dark expired, the corner churchtolled its bells. Beyond the church an oily river ran both day and nightand there along its banks I first conversed with the doctor and Waldo, his dog. "Young man," he said in words resembling English, "you would dressheavy for autumn, scarf, hat, gloves. Not to smoke," he added, "as I do." Eleven, small for my age but ambitious,I took whatever good advice I got, though I knew then what I knownow: the past, not the future, was mine. If I told you he and I became palseven though I barely understood him,would you doubt me? Wakened before dawnby Catholic bells, I would dressin the dark — remembering scarf, hat, gloves –to make my way into the deserted streets to where Waldo and his master ambled the riverbank. Sixty-four years ago,and each morning is frozen in memory,each a lesson in what was to come. What was to come? you ask. This worldas we have it, utterly unknowable, utterly unacceptable, utterly unlovable,the world we waken to each day with or without bells. The lesson was in his hands, one holding a cigarette,the other buried in blond dog fur, and inhis words thick with laughter, hushed, incomprehensible, words that were soundonly without sense, just as these must be.Staring into the moist eyes of my maestro,I heard the lost voices of creation running over stones as the last darkness sifted upward,voices saddened by the milky residueof machine shops and spangled with first light,discordant, harsh, but voices nonetheless.