The Poet's Last Vacation
New Haven to Seattle—two thousand
miles I've come to see the sockeye salmon
swim a mile upstream to lay their eggs and die.
Through lit glass I watch the torn fish
climb. They fall, then rise against cement
and channeled water, up a concrete
ladder, away from sea and salt.
Ahead, the water's fresh; the lake bed waits.
I press a button; a recorded voice
explains the salmons' need to fight the weight
of falling water, to end where they began.
Later, in the warm Seattle sun,
I watch a bargeman sit and rest on sand.
The closed lock fills to ease him on.
And will death be a quiet midday passage,
my back pressed flat against the warmth of sand;
Or like the salmon will I struggle to create,
My body bent, my eyes wide open,
My face still buried in a wall of sound.
Air-raid Drill, 1953
They tumble to the floor
beneath their desks. Heads bent, their necks
and faces cradled in their small white arms,
they kneel, as if in silent awkward prayer,
as if waiting for the hand of God to shake
the chalk dust from the coal-black boards,
as if waiting for the howling to begin.
High on the wall behind my desk,
on a clock face older than atomic bombs
and air-raid shelters, a black hand
slowly fingers time, like rosary beads.
In this measured stillness, I watch
my students arms and knees begin to shake.
From beneath their desks they look to me
for absolution. No one talks or moves.
The siren blares a second time,
loud and long and shrill.
Silence shatters
into laughter, and the class begins to rise;
as if this were the end of waiting,
as if it were all clear.
Bob Meszaros taught English at Hamden High School in Hamden, Connecticut, for thirty-two years. He retired from high school teaching in June of 1999. He now teaches part time at Quinnipiac University. His poems have appeared in The Connecticut Review, Main Street Rag, Tar River Poetry, The Red Wheelbarrow, and others literary journals.