Chapter One

NOT LUNAR EXACTLY
(Detroit, 1948)


New, and entirely new to the neighborhoodÉ
One August day, it came to their own street:
the Nutleys brought home a television!
Nights now, the neighbors began to meet
more often than before, out walking,
walking past the Nutleys, who, on display
behind their picture window, sat frozen
in their chairs, watching their television, which lay
off to the side, just out of view,
so you couldn’t make out what
it was they were watching but only
them watching, the four Nutleys, in a blue
glow that was lunar but
not lunar exactly.


That was the summer we all
watched the Nutleys–no,
we all watched “The Nutleys,”
which was the one great show
of the summer, it ran for weeks,
with its four silent stars
behind glass, until nights went cold
and damp and we turned to our cars
if we ventured out after dark,
and then–three in a row–
the Daleys, the Floods, the Markses
took the plunge, they brought home the glow,
and the Nutleys, suddenly,
belonged to a new community.




FROM HERE TO THERE


There are those great winds on a tear
Over the Great Plains,
Bending the grasses all the way
Down to the roots
And the grasses revealing
A gracefulness in the wind’s fury
You would not otherwise
Have suspected there.

And there’s the wind off the sea
Roiling the thin crowns of the great
Douglas firs on the cragged
Oregon coast, uprooting
Choruses of outraged cries,
As if the trees were unused
To bending, who ca