Hardworking sons and daughters of immigrant warriors.
Brave
souls
accustomed
to long days and even longer nights.
Folks who sleep with their windows open during the summertime
and pray for a breeze
even
the slightest
to
dry the sweat trickling down the middle of their aching backs.
Silently worrying in their dark bedrooms
about
money, family, and health
and hoping there really is a God
who
can provide a miracle ending their pain and suffering.
Even in all this suffering
there
is a deeper chemistry that makes up these people
their
hopes, dreams, and struggles.
Men who cash their paychecks
on
Friday evenings at the local A&P grocery store
and
who always forget something on their wives’ shopping lists.
Men with steel-hard hands with sandpaper rough calluses
from turning wrenches
picking
coal
and
pounding smoothness into bowed steel sheets.
Men who awkwardly hug their children
hoping the chemistry helps them find their way in life
without
too much pain and sorrow.
Like their parents and grandparents
the
people of Martins Ferry restlessly search for the dream.
You know, the American Dream.
Like the thick lazy
streams of smoke
drifting from the chimneys atop their houses
their dreams form heavy 1950s clouds
keeping them from seeing beyond today's bills
and their sick
child who must go to the doctor.
Children shoot marbles…cat's eyes and boulders
under the giant tree on the Elm School
playground.
The sun breaks through the clouds just for a moment
but
long enough to keep the faint hope alive
that they inherit early from
their stern, hardworking parents—
who complain about their materialistic children
and how they will never come to visit them on
Sunday afternoons when they grow old.
There is a chemistry about a place
especially the place where you grew up.
It lingers in your soul
quietly
waiting for the right moment to come out.
It shows:
in
how you greet strangers
whether you shine your shoes in the morning
how generous you are with your smile
especially when you don't feel loved.
It even makes a cameo appearance in how you cut your grass.
The chemistry
of Martins Ferry can be
as
rancid as the dead catfish that fishermen leave
along
the shores of the Mighty Ohio.
And it can be as sweet and peaceful
as
the sun-filled clover fields
that
invite young boys to lie on their backs
and dream about far-off places they will visit someday.
Either
way the chemistry makes us who we are.
Written in
memory of James Wright, Martins Ferry's poet son. Inspired by my adventuresome childhood friend, Dan Shimp.
