TO GRANDFATHER WHO DIED IN A FIRE
Grandfather
You had a newspaper floor
It’s nearly all I know of you
Your floor for stories for boring uncles
“It kept his feet warm in the winter,” they chuckled
Basting me with turkey-breath tongues
Through cranberry-stained teeth
And mocking judgment
The “Tsk-tsk” of suckled toothpicks or charred pipes
Explained your certainty that the great war
Would ensure an end to linoleum
You protected your floor with The Chicago Tribune,
Convinced no flax would grow again
They said: “Silly old man!”
But I imagine your long sizzling summers
The sound of splashing laughter at Foster Avenue Beach
Sounds of crumbling statues
In late-afternoon: all the mayors
Since the great fire
Sounds amplified
By yesterday’s open pages
Is that the newsprint smell of second-coming headlines
Anointing all
Who trespassed barefoot against them?
I can see the stiff old doily
And a missing ashtray
You only smoked when you worried
What bothered you,
Grandfather?
Was it something in the news?
You dozed in dreamy smoke
Awoke too late and were inhaled by flames
We who came after you
Might have read all about it on your floor
Had you not been so sleepy, yet so concerned
Michael Riordan is a writer of poetry, short stories, features, and musical plays for schools and community theater. A lover of travel, he has taught in the U.S., Australia, Singapore, and recently in China as a professor of writing and film studies. He co-founded Creative Action Now, a Singapore-based language school and consultancy. He won first prize for nonfiction in the spring 2020 “Ageless Authors” contest; recent work appears in Tether’s End, Epoch Press, Spirituality & Health, and Short Edition short story dispenser, among others. See more: www.clippings.me/wordsticks
Michael Riordan lives in Arlington, Texas USA