5.7 Pennsylvania Whiskers & a Russian Lady

by Eric Chaet

On our way
to march
with signs
in Washington
we filed in
from the bus
shaking with cold
breathing fine
coal-grimed air
hunched over
the all-night counter
among
bleary old miners—
the other passengers
(strangers
brought together
on a mission
like others
they’d engaged in,
& would again—
true to their best hopes,
however unlikely success)
elbowing mugs of coffee,
steam curling up nostrils.

Drops of chocolate malt trembled at tips of my whiskers
(still new enough I noticed)
when one ragged old wheat-bearded guy
swiveled on his stool, cast his piercing eye at me, & bellowed:
Let them whiskers grow, young feller! Let them whiskers grow!

There was giggling about it, thru Maryland—
but I was thinking of the woman in printed blue dress
she’d seemed old to me—at the free concert—
musicians performing in synchrony,
emanations from within the Grant Park shell,
Lake Michigan slapping the concrete pier—
one crew-cut summer evening
in the Loop next to my mother
who was carried as an infant
from one empire to another
(before I had a clue how the park or Chicago came to be
or when or what the doomed empire was
in which Beethoven had harvested, then planted the seeds)
who, seeing my copy of Anna Karenina,
said, “Anna Karenina, ah!”
&, when I nodded,
rattled Russian off so hard & fast
I thought she’d cry
when she finally noticed my uncomprehending eye.

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Top picture: Ken B. Miller
Lower picture: Van Gogh