And Still They Come

            The Evening Times, February 18, 1925

 

​

During the days dedicated to the memory

of the canal, they fill the parks with vendors hawking

stuffed gingham teddy bears, potholders,

dream catchers, three-for-ten-dollars t-shirts with

howling wolves Nascar baseball fishing

the whole kit-and-kaboodle.

Because it’s a celebration of the canal

there’s a car show, Camaros mostly; later, a jazz band;

two-for-one raffles, fifty-fifty raffles, $100 raffles,

bingo. 

 

Gambling at least is closer

to what should be the spirit of the thing.

For the sake of history only

they should line up Irishmen

and hit them with clubs.

They should dynamite things indiscriminately.

They should establish pestilential camps of immigrants

along the river and trail posh dining cars through the valley,

a fat Titan slurping Blue Points at each window.

They should close the water treatment plant and let

sewage run straight into the river.

 

In April 1874, spring finally swelled the canal

and it swelled in George Curtis his deepest desire.

Being four and bored and longing for anything other than

the nagging whines of his younger brother and

the plaintive cries of his infant sister,

George saw his chance, and begged his mother

and begged his mother for a pocket knife.

Even in 1874 he was young, but all four-year-olds

are persistent and single-minded in their pursuits.

George was certainly, picking his chances: should a cabinet screw

need tightening, George would bemoan the absent knife

that could have served the trick; before dinner, a loaf

of bread on the board, how useful, he would remind her,

a good knife could be.  How useful, really, he could be,

and finally one day, striking while the sister was sick

and the mother exhausted – he is such a good boy, really,

she thought to herself repeatedly after she handed the boy

the coin, and he asks for so little – he finally got his knife,

two-and-a-half inches long, with a ridged wooden handle

he stroked until sleep came that first night,

promising adventures that had been postponed

for the Sabbath.

The next day, the city blossoming with business and

the locks opening and closing like

atrial valves of commerce, George sprung

onto a recently unladen canal boat bobbing in the wake

beyond Foley’s Hotel.

Mohicans, knights on chargers, and pirates

sprang with him, so it was no wonder that some unseen force

jarred the boat, or that George, amidst

a brilliant parry, fell on his sword

and severed an artery.

The boat master briefly assumed George’s prostrate form

was that of a drunken midget, until he saw the blood, and

only a few brief inquiries around the canal shops

would lead the authorities to a still exhausted mother.

Only two days later a jury would render a verdict of

accidental death, but the mother would know for the rest of her life

that while that was true, it was only part

of the story, that one might as well blame it on

fatigue and love and exuberant imagination.

 

The bumper-car sparkle-paint of a ‘74 Camaro

shines like the sun;

its engine thrums with new life.

Men with tight black t-shirts tight

smile knowingly and pick their teeth and

hook their thumbs into their jeans;

later they’ll buy beer and sausage-and-peppers and feel

the August burn on their necks and long

for ’74 and a Camaro to go with it.