On lukewarm summer evenings
My grandparents’ back porch was lit
By a naked bulb. The light held every moment
Of those nights, proudly, as if the watts
Had run away from the sun, disguised
Themselves as electricity, and poured over us
Freely, knowing that Father Star was
Somewhere on the other side
Of the world.
Norman Rockwell would have painted it—
A candid gathering of warm, tired bodies
That still had enough energy to smile.
My grandmother sat in her swing,
raised a mason jar full of sweet tea
Up to her cracked lips, and drank, and sighed.
She read us the local obituaries. I liked that
They were always unexpected, tragic passings:
The way she spoke, it didn’t make her
Seem quite as old, as near to death.
My grandfather sat beside her,
Stoic as a guard rail, until he could ruffle up
Some original one-liner at her expense.
That’s how they had always loved each other.
And in this dusk-static heat of late July,
My grandfather got up from his place in the family
Circle and walked out to the garden, wading waist-deep
In the stalks and foliage he had planted by hand.
My grandmother started in: Your grandfather hasn’t ever been
The same since he killed that man.
It was poised as common, family knowledge.
The expressions of all those beneath the light
Dropped into their tea glasses. She talked to herself
It seemed, relaying an old story.
It was his friend,Charles, down at the bridge
Company. You know,your grandfather worked them
Big cranes, and one afternoon, the hookman didn’t do hisjob
And the signalman wasn’t looking close enough,
And the load snapped loose. There wasn’t anything left
To bury of that man. Your grandfather was never the same
After that, became a different kind of man. He sent a check
To that man’s family every month till his kids were grown.
Yeah, your grandfather liked to never got over that.
He was far out of earshot and fully emerged
In the elements of an infinite summer night:
The tree frogs in and out of croaking rhythm,
The drifts of smoke running from the neighbors’
Blazing brush pile, the shouts of big truck motors,
And the lingering hum of kids a few houses down,
The echoes of their afternoon wiffle ball game
Still warming the air. He was small in the distance,
Unaware of us—the man who sat me on his lap
And taught me how to drive in the backyard,
Who taught me how to fix a lawn mower
And to use a grindstone, who educated me
On the ways to plant and work the fields.
How would Norman Rockwell paint this—
The portrait of an accidental man, barely visible
By the distending glow of the back porch light,
Walking away from whatever he left in the backyard?
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