LONGFELLOW IN BROOKLYN

There was no poetry in my father's house,
Just raking in the Fall and shoveling in Winter;
And those of us who feared to fail at anything...
Mother aired the bedding cold as death
And scraped the tiles of any memory
That we had showered and left it wet.
She dusted everything away
Which makes a house a home -
And strangeness met us at the door
Though no one understood...
And when father read from Hiawatha
I wondered what he really saw behind the words,
But no one ever asked him.
There was no poetry in my father's house.

Ken Siegelman
Brooklyn Poet Laureate