First Responder
I read about it on my phone.
The children. Their father. The fire.
I wondered how a mother
Could go on this way.
I even questioned God
Who let this happen.
Then went about my day.
I never knew til later my friend
Responded. He heard
Her wails
Fill an empty night.
He did what he was trained to do
And may have asked
Did it have to end this way?
Unlike myself
He carries seven saints through nights
He can't extinguish.
Boxing Day, 1965
My mother and father fret
over an ice floe of bills after
Christmas loses its luster, its
decorations as gaudy as Liberace,
pine needles sprinkling the rug
with every footfall. Dad holds
the bill for the Lionel train
he hears whirring in the living
room where any of his seven
kids search for GI Joe’s grenade,
Barbie’s bathing suit, or Lincoln
Logs hiding under the sofa.
My mother taps her wordless
message, it’ll be okay, like
Morse Code into his formidable
forearm, bulged like the
Incredible Hulk’s under duress.
His shirt sleeves shred like my hero’s,
skin, pea green, as he neatly
paperclips the bills and sips
his breakfast tea.