DREAMING OF OLD JOBS

 

We still dream of those old jobs, the ones leading only to the next shift, the next break, the next paycheck and day off, to rest and to worry, and start it all over again. Those jobs that we gave so many years to follow us like ghosts, tracking us down in our anxious sleep, as if we had left one detail or another unfinished, forgot to lock up or turn the thermostat down. The waitress balances her tray of trembling water glasses two decades after she has retired, a cacophony of voices still calling out their orders. The bus driver turns his oversized wheel onto a street with neither a name nor discernable stops. Your mother still packs shells at the munitions plant ten hours a day, and your brother tears sheets of steel from the shearing machine into eternity, tiny stars of metal glinting beneath his skin. While you stand on the loading dock of a crumbling factory, ringing the service bell again and again. It's so early the birds are not yet stirring, the winter darkness folding in around you. But you have been here long enough. If no one answers this time, you think, you'll force yourself to wake, and be gone.

CHARLOTTE

 

Charlotte was well into her ninth decade,

with no plans for retirement, making,

slicing, and packing sandwiches

on the assembly line with the rest of us

poor souls -- perpetually bored teenagers,

dropouts, and functioning addicts trying to survive.

Her face was a wonder of lines intersecting

with lines, of worry and laughter,

one long and detailed story leading

imperceptibly into another; her skin, thin

as parchment, polished and shining

beneath the gray industrial light,

especially when she turned to smile.

Her beloved husband Frank had long since left

this life, while their children, and their children, had

grown and moved away, one to the east

and one far out west, remembering, most years,

to call at Christmas and her birthday.

"What would I do sitting at home alone?,"

she would ask to no one in particular,

answering herself with an exaggerated shrug.

Decades earlier, she had worked

at the ammunition plant not far from here,

alongside my aunt Anna Mae, counting

and packing machine gun shells for the war

six days a week, her hands perpetually

smelling of metal and oil for years.

This work was easier, much easier by far.

"Here I can eat what I make," she once quipped,

"and no one gets hurt, or killed -- just fed."

D.A.V. THRIFT STORE

 

Another nowhere job in my early twenties was

the D.A.V. Thrift Store on University Avenue,

unloading and pricing junk merchandise

as it rolled in off the box trucks.

Used toasters, baby strollers, bedding,

odds and ends, those old man cardigan sweaters

which I had suddenly grown fond of.

Harry, already in his 60s, black brille-cremed hair,

pencil mustache, blue-green Merchant Marine

tattoo fading into itself, chain smoked

throughout the workday, shaking his head

in wonder at the myriad things

people were willing to buy.

He had eyes for Gina, the young, blonde cashier,

doughy-faced, quiet, and disarmingly naïve.

Then, there was the middle-aged man who was

permanently banned from the store

for obsessively sniffing women's shoes,

kneeling before the rack in a form of obeisance

or defeat, a grossly tragic or comedic form of

loneliness, depending on your perspective.

We were all doing time in our own way,

students, retirees, and the occasional criminal,

going nowhere on a daily basis.

Except, as it turns out, Harry and Gina,

who ran away together without notice, sending

a postcard-sized photo back months later

of no determinable location: trees bent

into question marks, and long grass waving,

sparks of blue water in the background.

"Wish you were here," was all it read.

And I would venture that every one of us,

without exception, certainly did.

THE SOCIALIST OPERA HOUSE

 

It's long gone now, the place where the working class Finns met to raise their banners and sing the songs of labor, to act upon the stage a world that made a bit more sense, taught the lessons not yet learned. Gone now the farmers with broken English and missing fingers, the rebel girls and rabble rousers, the miners who shed their blood for a day's pay and a day of rest in this land of the free. Gone now, one dream swallowed by another when no one was looking. Though the bones of the building remain, housing yet another office, yet another bank. But the stage is still there, hollow, and long unused, holding close its secrets in dusty curtain folds and boards. The old songs are still there for any voice to lift again. The prop ship still hangs in the dust of darkened rafters, white sails torn and frayed, ready to set sail for a paradise, real or imagined, so very far from here.

ALL THE LOVE WE LAY CLAIM TO

 

My great-grandfather Juho leans forward slightly

in his chair, as though about to speak

or to reach out his hand one last time

to his beloved, at rest in the casket beside him,

its doorway already covered in handfuls of flowers

and soil, heavy and damp, the solemn faces

of men in the background looking on, weary,

their funeral suits and ties virtually interchangeable.

But the mourner up front wears his work shirt

for this, the hardest labor he has endured

in a lifetime of work, his hands having carved

long into the night a seemingly endless array of roses

and filigree into the wood, as he had once carved

into the marriage bed, and the children's cribs,

hands that look suddenly exposed and empty,

lingering like uncertain birds too long into winter.

Could he have imagined this moment when he arrived

from that other world, with neither currency

nor language, to stake his claim and break this

ground open like a sacred book of secrets?

He must have known, without ever having to say,

that the earth we till must be fed in return,

and all the love we lay claim to must be met equally

with grief, solid as the ground on which we stand.

This, it seems, is the only bargain we are offered,

our baffled silence continually interpreted as assent.

SNOWBOUND

 

Everything has moved in closer this morning, everything weighted and wet, the gray sky slung low, curbs and corners all but erased by the endless dunes of white. Up and down the block, the drone and whir of snow blowers ring out, shovels scraping, lifting precariously, nearly breaking beneath the load. Their long handles dot the landscape like makeshift memorials. Shoulder to shoulder, strangers and neighbors push and rock the stubborn boats of automobiles free, at least momentarily. Beneath our woolen layers, the sweet-pungent sweat of winter rises and falls, small clouds of breath answering one weary sigh with another. We await the night plows flashing their small lights of salvation, await even the smallest avenue of passage. For today, no one is going anywhere. Though we are working diligently, patiently to get there.

AT THE NATURALIZATION CEREMONY

 

The families begin arriving early, the men in freshly

pressed suits, pocket squares, the women in bold patterned

dresses and colors that defy the gray drizzling skies,

their faces without exception beaming with light,

young children at their sides looking up,

knowing this day to be something extraordinary.

"There are people who live here who hate this country,"

the young woman from Colombia explains

to a local newscaster, shaking her head, "but to us,

this is still The Promised Land. It's everything."

I can't help but think of my own ancestors, who, too,

arrived with nothing, learned to speak this strange, unruly

language, drive cars, fight this nation's many wars.

It's hard to imagine my steely-eyed great-grandfather,

never caught smiling in a photo, wearing a face of

such unabashed joy. But what do I know of another's heart?

I know only this moment, this day, this swell of pride

as these new citizens make their way up Kellogg Boulevard,

their small flags waving in the chilly damp air.

It is as though a hundred or more makeshift boats were

setting out, each on a separate but similar course.

Even when they have all but vanished from view,

their voices can still be heard singing, laughing,

proclaiming -- so many different dialects, different

songs, so many different ways to say Home.