My Father's Hands That Winter
       

That year there was cold like no other winter.
Every morning
going out was a gymnastic affair.

Even the steps inside
the house, nearly to the door
of our flat on the third floor were iced

over. Mrs. Mac broke a leg
and Harry Styx (for the first time in his life he said)
found it much too hard to beg.

We became technicians of the slide
and forward propulsion,
of throwing your body, arms wide

open, out into some zone of contract
with the air, where corning to a stop
ever ever again was taken on trust.

The city looked good enough to eat
and weathervane was a new word
I picked up from a storybook. Our feet

were always wet and numb and blue.

*

It's why I remember my father's hands so clearly.
He was out of work. It must have been through

desperation on the cusp of Christmas that he took
a job in Carton's as a turkey plucker.
For buttons, he said, and I saw a frock

like the girl's in the storybook, all fuddy duddy
in ribbons and flounces with black patent shoes.
His hands were swollen, scratched raw and bloody

from the sharp ends of feather, of sinew,
of tendon, from the fourteen-hour day,
from the bite of the boss. At the window

I'd watch each morning, impatient for dawn
and ice engineering. He'd boil up
a big pot of eggs, school lunch for us children.

He'd button down the younger ones' coats
gingerly, and tie up the laces of their shoes
and tuck in our scarves at our delicate throats

—an egg in each pocket to keep us warm,
old socks on our hands to guard against chilblains.
A kiss on his forehead to keep him from harm.

*

The city must have thawed at last
and unmagicked that winter when
I reached the age of reason. The past

was a new territory I would explore
at leisure and at will
by pushing on the unlatched tenement door.

I could hold in mind forever now
my father's hands that winter and
the city walls and railings freaked with snow.

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Copyright © 2022 Paula Meehan All rights reserved
from As If By Magic
Wake Forest University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission