Business

Stiff, thick: the white hair of the broad-faced father,

who leads his shambling son along

cracked sidewalks, by dusty glass half hiding

goods never sold. The son is the taller one

but still a child: not aware of his clothes,

of what expressions seize on his soft face.

His gait lolls, loosely directed from some weak,

distant center, scarcely devoted to any purpose

but following along and looking. Thick lenses glint

with watery blue: his small eyes, veiled

and placid, as far off as the milky August sky.

The father, all the time glancing at him and talking

as man to man, seems to forget it would be better

for this one to have been like all the rest.

He has his son still with him, the others

have grown up and gone away—but when he dies,

then what will happen to the boy? Even this thought

is absorbed now in their ordinary errand,

men’s business: grateful going out through the day,

talk with the owners, the salesmen, a mechanic

in the scent of grease and sawdust of machined metal,

the sifting through tools and parts that flow, spill, gleam

like seeds, like sand—looking for what fits,

finding what will work. Afterwards to stop for food,

then walk back home down the clear streets, when starlings,

hunting and restless before sleep, and children

are the loudest things, with the dark foaming

among maples, glinting, as it comes in.

Source: The Ruined Cottage (Wolsak and Wynn, 1993)