POEMS
Charles A. Swanson
Table Syrup, Cigarettes, and the Blind
Teach me thy way, O Lord,
that I may walk in thy truth . . .
Psalm 86:11, RSV
When I decided to burn
candles one winter
(calling poems out of
bayberry, wintergreen,
one more magical
prestidigitation)
I wanted an ashtray
for struck matches.
The only one we thought of
was coke bottle green,
a second grade gift
my wife had made her parents,
the picture of her face
looking up through glass.
I couldn’t snub matches
against such hopeful eyes.
My father smokes a pipe
so I asked my parents.
My mother brought me
dried out terrapin shells,
some with outer armor
chipped, neat rectangles
missing. I took to my study
one brown bit of earth child.
I became, as a result,
more aware of ashtrays,
relics of Americana,
tobacco stub palaces.
My mother-in-law’s home
honors my wife’s baby shoes,
coated now in bronze,
feet stilled before an ashtray.
But oddest bowl of all
the blue green ceramic
my aunt gave me. I begged
it from her when I was small
because I liked King’s syrup
swirled with homemade butter.
The alphabet circles
the bowl’s flat edge.
How many biscuits
I sopped beneath the raised dots
of the Braille alphabet,
not knowing the bowl’s white cane
was not a candy cane,
not knowing the rim’s indentations
were for cigarettes,
not knowing the ways of my time.