Sunday, in his grandmother’s time, had been the day
You went visiting. Noontime news, topped with beet borsht
And pickled pigs’ feet, cottage cheese stuffed in pancakes—
And schputting, silly talk—and coffee. His art
With his hopes had conspired to conduct him
Many states away, but even now when
Sunday’s here he calls his kin.
And when he’d call his parents, his dad would begin
With weather—“Five inches since Friday,
Seven and three-tenths since Monday, it may even
Hock up more, and lightning”—and his mother would inveigh
Or other times dial up other composings—
“First frost came so we picked up the hoses,
Slid the barn doors closed,
Any minute now we’ll get fresh straw for the stalls”—
Or she’d log how they “butchered the hens, one had a clot
Of new eggs in her, ready to lay”—or she might tell
Stories of Aunt Larrie who never married and carried a snuffbox,
Or dad would describe his having recycled
Faxes that had blankened,
Each message returned
To the ether, and then the son might describe a minus tide or tell
How his shoulder—tattooed—has haired over, as if his swallow
Flies in a thicket, or he’d ask “how low is the well?”
Or “which kind of locust, again, is the swing tree?”—and so
Forth, they’d sneeze, cough, mention the soaphouse
Had had to be razed, or that the catamaran was trounced
In a squall, or how their bodies were giving out—
An organ recital, they called it, and he, drinking coffee, might offer
As balm the lights up the hills in the night in his city
Described as the winkings of prodigious piles of embers,
And his mother would report on emerald leaves, emerald wheat,
“High leaning cloudbanks,” or his father
Might note that the starlings were
Mustering the pasture, they could murder
If they wanted. And the son, not really sure what then to say,
Says an iconic radio tower, from where he sits, presents
Like a comb jelly. And they, who in his imagination
Are in the dining room he knows well, hold up their phone, up against
The back window to let him hear
The call—so personal and clear—
Of the train out there.