Road Metal

Timothy McBride

-- for my grandmother, Margaret Kelly

"You don't need that," she'd tell us when we'd beg

Two cents for bubblegum or licorice.

A bricklayer's daughter, she'd grown up hard

As cement -- never reached 100 pounds,

Lived on potatoes and tea, cut her own hair.

Husband gone, youngest child killed in the street,

She carried a ball peen hammer up her sleeve

On the daily walks she made us take all over town,

Crossing the river and the canal, circling the miles

Of Eastman Kodak's smokestacks, through the invisible

Hops-scented cloud of the Genesee Brewery,

Past the burned-out storefronts of the '67 riots,

Never stopping at the church where the brother

She wouldn't speak to, a Catholic priest,

Celebrated morning mass. We followed her

Through drain pipes and alleys. We crawled under a gap

She found in the fence beside the KEEP OUT sign

And up onto the tracks of the New York Central Line,

Startled when she unclasped (this once) her change purse

And gave us each three pennies to lay on the polished rail.

When the tank cars and ore jennies had passed,

We sifted through the ballast rock

She said was called "road metal," excited as prospectors

For the ruined and unspendable glints of warm copper

Lincoln's face flattened to a smudge

Our first lesson in what our city's daily freight

Can do to words like "God" and "Trust."