Ozone blues and the hands that tried.
That old Zenith sat
like a dark-faced preacher,
its back peeled open -
a small cathedral
of wire and light.
Dad would kneel,
sleeves rolled high,
his face half-shadow,
half-glow -
serious as Sunday,
quiet as prayer.
Me, I was the altar boy,
posted on the rug
with Mom’s hand mirror -
oval, gold-handled,
a crack down the side
that flashed like lightning
when I held it wrong.
“Angle it - no - just so…”
he’d say,
and I’d twist my wrist
‘til it ached,
trying to catch his face
in that trembling glass.
The back of that Zenith
smelled like dust and heat,
like breath from an older world.
Each tube a small sun
fighting to live again.
Sometimes he’d pull one,
plug in a new ghost,
and the screen would spark -
not picture yet,
just a snowstorm
racing toward itself.
And in that crackling light,
I thought maybe
he wasn’t fixing the Zenith -
maybe he was fixing silence,
trying to tune the room
to something like peace.
But time on Lincoln Street
didn’t move right;
it stretched, it hummed,
it stayed stuck between
then and not-yet.
The tube tester hissed,
his hands kept working -
steady as mercy.
Now Dad’s gone.
So’s the Zenith.
So’s the smell
of warm metal breath.
But sometimes,
when a streetlight hums,
I see his hands again -
steady, sure,
like the world could still
be mended by touch.
And I, grown now,
still catch myself holding
that mirror wrong -
chasing the angle
where light finds face,
and time, for a breath,
glows whole.
GB Shaw Jr.
Albany, NY
2023
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