A FACE AT THE PANE

The summer my sister and I rode stilts
around the block, week after week, is locked
in the same corner Joe McCarthy keeps
on the TV our father bought the living room.
He also built those stilts from 2×2s,
with blocks of 2×4 nailed in for the foot-pieces
the height of our stoop's first step from the sidewalk.

As many times that summer as we could,
we showed up on the main street with its bars
and haberdasheries and furniture stores.
No matter how odd we looked to the shopkeepers
watching us from their windows passing by,
we had a job to do and were going to do it.

We learned how to walk the length of Morrell Street
around to Junction Avenue and Vernor Highway
and back to Morrell Street without falling off.
We did this until late August came
with its ponderous clouds, its intimations of routine,
of careless time and the beauty of freedom spoiled,
the stilted knock of sky-borne walkers stilled.

We wouldn't have known what to think of all of that.
Our father's death was twenty-some years off,
our mother's nearly twenty further on.
She was the doughtier of the two of them,
designed for the long haul, despite complaints,
mostly about the legs and the hip joints.
They keep a person stepping near the ground
and eventually feet-first into it after a while.

This is the bitter pill that has got to be swallowed.
It leaves its acrid stain on the mother tongue.
When I look out that window, I savor those bees abuzz,
like teams of peasants at their happy toil.
I sweat to quit my soul its tic of due regard.
Expansive anguish spawns a riot of fond regret.

When and if the roof falls in, I'll want a record
of present conditions. It's good to know where things went.

Torn from a decent sleep, I'd stumble out
to find my walking stick leaning against what's left
of the garden shed, and the ancestral yew
that poured its mighty grieving by the road
redoubling into oafish countryside.

Michael Heffernan