Nancy Flynn

The Winter We Lived in the Church & It Snowed Daily & the First Barrel of Crude Oil Traveled Successfully Through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline

It was the bitterest night. I couldn’t sleep so I rose
from our altared bed. Found Ella doing Gershwin on the radio,
traced the sanctuary planks, hours of dodging dreams.
How hard, that year. Yet my feet remembered to arch
their fragile bones then sultry-slink past the ash—
come dawn, the fate of the woodstove’s coals.

Our routine before bed: one or the other banked the coals.
Hoping to keep some heat alive before whoever rose
first to shiver then rake, scrape then shovel the ash.
Whenever it was my turn, I turned on the radio,
tuned in that DJ, his voice like butter warming to arch
over the sad I wore, an invisible robe, my life no dream.

I thought of the Methodist ladies, wondered if they ever dreamed
Rockette kicks to loosen hairnet curls, no more chorus lines picking coal.
Mornings, I congregated my books and pens. Repaired to the arch
where rays through stained-glass panes of violet, green, and rose
spoke enough to convince I no longer had to (that day) radio
an S.O.S: Someone, please save me before I melt or turn to ash!

Christened myself Wicked Witch of the Pennsylvanian Northeast, my ash-
cloud not a pointed hat but those tunnels of snow: no dream.
Daily I cindered, traction for the car’s tires, its radio
broken, my solace lost as I drove the ice past mines where coal
spoke in tongues of profit & loss so Painted Ladies and spires rose
ritzier than our so-called house of God, barely with nave or arch.

Where I swayed that unbound night, my belly a majestic arch
of triumph to what? My foolish wish was never to worry that ash
was what I breathed instead of snow. While the booming baby rose,
destined to join the choir, play pinball after midnight, guitar-dream
a string to break or tune, one make-believe future miles away from coal.
Until it was “I Loves You Porgy,” Nina Simone on the night-jazz radio

show. Why couldn’t summertime be the living easier on that radio?
I didn’t ask for much. Words to (mostly) fill and plead and arch.
Believing that fate stayed fate with no reverse like the woodstove coals,
their predictable burn and burn and burn until they powdered, ash.
It was one bitterest night. And my dream stayed only that, a dream.
I couldn’t sleep. Heard “God Bless the Child” from my altar. So I rose.

Them that’s got shall get                                                            
Them that’s not shall lose                                                           
So the Bible said and it still is news
                                                           

I listen to the radio. Feel the blues, my muse to ash.
Daybreak, a jig is best to snap to, arch toward dream.
It’s time to sift the coals. They’re glowing, rose.

 

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