On Lincoln Street I sat...
book open, heart open,
summer sun leaning through the window,
time thick as molasses in a jar.
Melville spoke -
not loud,
not shouting,
but soft,
like a man brushing dust
from his own coat.
“The Usher was pale,
threadbare in coat, in body, in brain.”
I saw him.
And I saw my father too -
thin in his last weeks,
threadbare in body,
but still breathing,
still ours.
The handkerchief appeared -
flags of the world stitched bright,
mocking mortality with color.
I thought: isn’t that the way?
The bright beside the fading.
The laugh beside the sorrow.
The flags beside the dust.
In my room on Lincoln Street,
Elmira hushed outside,
I heard memory hum its tune -
crickets, a screen door sighing,
Mother in the kitchen,
Father resting.
And me -
holding a book like a candle,
a summer like a prayer.
The words said dust,
and I thought of dust:
on shelves, on shoes,
in the corners of our years -
dust of living,
dust of leaving.
But still...
the man kept dusting.
Still...
I kept reading.
Still...
Father kept breathing,
slow, steady,
as though each breath
was both arrival and farewell.
And something turned inside me then -
the quiet realization
that a room can hold the whole world.
Lincoln Street.
Elmira silence.
A window of summer.
A man still breathing.
A boy learning to listen.
Peace came, yes -
but not the empty kind.
Sorrow came, too -
but it did not undo me.
I felt memory rise -
a low blues line under the skin,
a hymn hummed at dusk,
the whistle of a train
moving through what remains.
So I let Melville’s Usher sit beside me,
dusting his grammars.
I let my father’s silence
dust the corners of my heart.
And I thought...
maybe we are all dust-keepers,
book-holders,
memory-savers,
flag-wavers in the long parade of time.
And the blues kept playing,
quiet, steady,
through the open window,
through the still air,
through me -
sitting on Lincoln Street,
holding peace and ache together,
like two hands clasped,
like one long note
that never fully ends.
GBS
Queens, NY
2024
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