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My Grandma's bed had boxes under it.
I assumed they were full of patterns
She was a prolific seamstress.
She made a superhero costume for me
When I was five or six.
It was Robin, the Boy Wonder.
Not Batman, not Superman.
Robin. The Boy Wonder.

My Grandma sewed Noah
And Mrs. Noah and pairs of animals
Sheep, Giraffes,
I don't know, I'm doing this from memory.
My dad built an ark
On wheels. With a ramp
And a removable roof.
The roof had a hatch door so the giraffes could
stick their heads out.
Rabbits, Pigs.

My dad built an apartment
Over our garage
So my Grandma could live with us
She was not his mother
But she was Grandma.
Elephants, Doves
Her sons would not help my dad
And told him he would not succeed
But he was from Missouri
So go to hell.

My Grandma told me once
That I marched to the beat
of a different drummer.
It was true.
I spent a lot of time in her apartment
Playing with Noah and the Ark
Wearing my Robin costume
It had a yellow cape.

He finished it alone
My dad, that is, finished building the apartment by himself
He must have been around 50
I'm 50 now
I wish I could help him
I wish I could help my dad build an apartment for my Grandma

My dad could build anything out of sheet metal
He was a sheet metal worker
He belonged to the sheet metal workers union
Local 99
That's from memory
He retired when I was 17.
He died when I was 27.
He was 72.
I am now closer to 72 than I am to 27
But no closer to my dad

My Grandma had a record player
She and I would listen to Herschal Bernardi
singing songs from Fiddler on the Roof
We would listen to Gilbert and Sullivan's
HMS Pinafore.
Probably the D'oyly Carte Opera Company
But I'm not sure.
We would listen to Arther Fiedler and the Boston Pops
Playing the 1812 Overture.
With the cannons at the end.

I can still sing along
I still have that music
I am the monarch of the sea
and I never swear a big big D
and if I were a rich man
and I don't remember growing older
when did they?

I have my dad's table saw and drill press
They still work but I don't use them
When I got divorced my wife insisted I take them
Out of her garage
I moved into a small basement apartment
The table saw stood by my bed
The drill press in the closet
Waiting to be needed

All through Tuesday
it rained down Jujubes in a steady drizzle.
Red green yellow orange purple streaks
of falling candy colorized the streetscape
bounced like psychedelic hailstones
became a cartoon carpet.
At first, of course, we caught them
in pots and pans
poured the particolored gems
into jars, cans, tins, bags
even Maggie’s shoeboxes
(she has a lot).
But the novelty in anything wears thin
and how many Jujubes
do you think you'll eat in a month? a year?
The city streetsweeper drivers got a lot of overtime
and I’m sure there were more than a few
sick dogs and kids that night.

Wednesday it was strawberries:
fresh as you please
beautifully formed
lust-red and sweet like nobody’s business.
A math prof from the U
gave a shot at quantifying
this heavenly harvest
but wasn’t sure whether to use
quarts or acre-feet.
It was quite a mess on the streets
and by the sound of the screech-and-thuds,
I imagine the insurance adjusters
were anxiously reviewing their “acts of God” clauses.
We’ve now got preserves out the wazoo
and the freezer’s packed tight;
I’m mostly worried I’ll never taste
another strawberry as good.

You can imagine the anticipation about Thursday.
Good ‘n’ Plenty or heads of lettuce?
The news said Vegas offered some interesting odds.
But nobody won the betting pool at work:
it was potato chips.
Who’d have guessed?
Lovely things, each a work of art
fluttering down like petals
golden wherever the sunlight caught them.
That’s when I noticed the sounds—
the Jujubes had made a loud patter,
the strawberries, wet thudding plops,
but the potato chips were quiet on the lawns and foliage,
and where they hit hard surfaces
the sound was a delightful sort of soft ticking.
The funny part
was different neighborhoods reporting different flavors:
salt-and-vinegar around campus
barbecue over in Grandview
sour cream and onion in Linden
cracked pepper up in Worthington.
We seemed to be in between—
a mix of salt-and-vinegar and New York cheddar.
We ran out of ziplocks in five minutes—
who wants stale chips?
There was a good deal of traffic that day
as folks drove to their “flavorhood”;
at least the accidents were fewer.

We’re almost giggly about Friday.
It’s the wee hours now—
the thing seems to start around dawn.
People I talk to aren’t sure
whether to break out wheelbarrows
5-gallon paint buckets
or tarps.
I haven’t looked forward to tomorrow
this much since I was a kid
on the nights before my birthday.
Funny, I can’t even remember now
if Monday was clear or cloudy.

It's quiet now.
No tire chains thumping down James Street
Everyone's home from work now
Everyone who's coming home
Those unlucky bastards who work the night shift
Will have to confront the Northeaster
When it arrives at midnight tonight.

Me, I'm safe. I'm home.
Let the wind blow, let the snow plow
I am behind insulated walls,
My blinds are closed tight
My threshold is sealed
Against the unwanted visitor

And I walk from room to room
Inspecting all my things
My books, my crosses,
My heart shaped stones
My box of old photos
My grandma's onion skinned papers
Her words stamped on them
With an inked ribbon and typebar letters
Her mistakes were crossed out
She did not waste paper
If she had to abandon a paper midway through
She turned it around and upside down
And started over.

This did not start out as a poem about my Grandma
They never do
But so many of them end that way.

eight years old and sledding
in the back yard with your dad
I watch you through the window,
want to capture this moment for you
so I take a photo --

and someday you'll look at it --

but you won't feel
the ice in the air, the very ground
frozen to itself, chilly flakes falling on your head,
getting stuck in your hair and eyelashes
melting on your tongue

you won't hear the whoosh, rush
in your ears as you fly
down the small slope
to the edge of our
dormant garden beds,
their green potential covered
in a haze of frost and snow

you won't hear your own voice
hysterical with laughter, catching
your breath, so cold, so cold
as you lay in the snow
making an angel
and then roll over and draw on it with a stick
transforming it into a hawk
and then an eagle
"daddy, daddy, look!"

you won't see any of that in a picture
but I take one anyway, braving the snow

to frame a close-up of you leaping,
manage to capture you in motion
in mid-air, about to land on your sled:

wanting only to feel
all of this again

I thought of him today
for the first time in a long time:
an old man’s face reminded me.
The man lacks those baby-blues
but something about him
was similar enough.
Or is it the power of anniversary?
(he’s gone 16 years this month)
Not the arbitration of calendars
but the palpable cycles of things—
Earth in orbit, seasons’ concatenation,
tides in blood and the deep soil of memory.

In many of my dreams
my father, too, is a regular visitor.
Gone over eight years,
he wanders in and out of my sleeping stories
with banal routine,
his presence unremarkable.
How odd this seems on waking—
were I to see him then,
how differently I’d feel!

I suppose the dead don’t leave;
they change rhythm, frequency
like a zoetrope spun too slow or fast
or a Dopplered train whistle;
we lose sight of them
do not hear them speak
not because they’re “gone”
but because we forget
there is more than one way of seeing,
more to hearing than our ears.