INTO EACH LIFE

In separate doorways,
my brothers
and the rain---
watching it baptize
this southern factory town.

The eyes of the elder
film over, opaque
as the factory windows
that visit his sleep,
the barnyard of childhood
vanished.

He is in another world,
rain trickling
onto his arms, shoulders,
words with a partial meaning
that gropes for something lost,
irretrievable.

When their first son was born
nothing else mattered.

Death and divorce
planted furrows in that sad,  intelligent face,
a door open always 
to the world's pleasures.

A mutinous vein
probes the broad forehead,
eyelids drift
like dry leaves.

     *    *

The younger man
looks up, the whites of his eyes
like clouds adrift on a windy day,
ignorant of tact, vainglory.






He goes back inside,
and listens to the rain,
scratching out a letter with a broken pen.
The workmen are all gone.
He straightens the green blotter,
examining the back of his hand.

He's caught, this one,
between two unhappy women.
One, drowning, watches him
rescue the other.

     *    *

Hand on the curved bannister,
our father comes down the stairs,
a battered suitcase filled with secrets.

Raw-eyed,
he looks neither right nor left,
a stride the years have ordained.

He is leaving this life 
for a better.
Will we ever see you again,
Father, only a step now
from your brand new car,
your dark woman?

He guns the engine
and heads north on the interstate,
the sky a brownish yellow
owned by the factories.

Miles away, soaked cabins
release their cold blue smoke,
the tall pines patient as old men on shares
who stand, their backs to the fire,
hill after lost hill.