Uphill block of red-brick buildings,
open for waterside business, 1888,
year my grandpa turned two;
grain merchants now gone,
The Woodmen's Society,
old sawbones barber, gone;
above the river, an oblong plaque
badged the arched doorway.
Makes me remember the immigrant glazier,
my Grandpa, who windowed such buildings:
He'd stand, one black boot braced
on the highest rung,
one hung in space,
instep balancing a light of glass
about to enter the frame; he'd hum
a gravelly tune, dance his body weight,
heave big shoulders, push hard,
then tap a tin dart into the sash.
Before my eyes the building rises
as two gentlemen pass behind me;
one points his cane,
saying to this spry mate,
"My Daddy used to own that site" --
and the workers who sang, my grandpa,
as if someone's kicked the ladder from under their feet,
drop from the scaffold,
vanish from a small town's past.
Peter Neil Carroll, poet, activist and historian, died in September of last year after a short illness at the age of 80. He was one of the key individuals involved in founding the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, and was also the long-time poetry moderator at Portside. From Riverborne: a Mississippi Requiem, available from Higganum Hills Books.
