NOTHING TO SELL
(After Roman Vishniac’s Storekeeper,
Krakow, 1938)
This figure in his doorframe
is my father’s
father, surely:
massive and
thin-lipped, a
Michelangelo in
ripped
buttonless
coat. Slack
yet immense as
gravity
he fills the
spavined entry
with abashed
endurance
as though sensing
in the dust of
worn steps
in the sluices of
morning
the sharp shameful
pang
of times being born.
On an oblong of
sky
angular as a
coffin
the day
accumulates
like sand.
Version first published in Midstream
(April 2003); reprinted in Watered Colors (2014)