Variation on a text by Seamus Heaney
Dream field white resolving clear into a scene:
intersection of High and Perdue, two men
walking to me down each street:
on Perdue, my grandfather in denim overalls,
patches worn white, holding out his hands
caked in callous and bruised blue-black as coal;
from High, a parody of me as lawyer,
finger indented by the pen he grips too hard
pushing back the sliding spectacles.
Someone should say something.
The lawyer leafs through notebooks of words already said
like a Berlitz of his own language
and my grandfather shrugs,
counts the grains of dust
covering his workboots.
The lawyer looks up: “Res ipsa loquitur.”
My grandfather parts his lips
and sighs a coal-gray ribbon.
Smell of tobacco, smell of mildew,
and from nowhere a third voice
not breaking through —
only the lawyer’s papers
like dried leaves scratching the sidewalk
and my grandfather wheezing.
Bruised hand pats my shoulder:
Don’t take black lung to smother to death.”
I’m ten steps down the lawyer’s way
and stop at another crossing, look back,
and though I don’t turn into salt
I’m just as still, waiting for some disembodied voice
to appoint me adept of dialects and dreams
that I might with that investiture
take the strange I’m in and make it plain.