We knew it as thrumming beat and ribtickle rhyme,

not as howling town wrapping steel river, hungry town

of whiskied blood and tackleboys, a place to ditch

your turpitude, canvas-sway across the ribcage

of the world to begin again in underbelly.

You were not the first — a path worn like centuried stone

by forebears dragging linkirons. You were not alone —

blood-thick brothers propping craven hearts. Here,

you tinkered and tailored and swilled, then pocketed coin

not your own, having sloughed a past but stowed your self.

Lucky for us, your blarneyed nights bartered your loss of luck

for a son, who came shimmying fast from his mother’s

muddied skirts to earthen floor, a missed catch,

a blue-eyed lad with bow legs, a mouth to match,

and a tongue beleaguered by wisdom. They say the blow

levered spirits from the star-canopy of his skull,

who whispered worldly thoughts in rhyme and song.

He was mocked, and hailed, as the chosen are,

but he was a love-learned boy whose aphrodisiac

innocence honeyed his way into scented sheets

and delivered me a grandfather. Oh, the miss

and hittery of it, the snatchery of love, with its tattle-tale

offspring who grow into men. Life, my grandfather

used to say, is a bubble in a bath. Crying’s no good,

you’ve gotta laugh.