The Immigrant Shore
Dancing across the ship’s deck
like a stone skipping the waters,
my grandfather
journeyed to Ellis Island–
a child, dreamy face flashing
among his pale and hopeful elders
who moaned over the sea,
watching westward
for the immigrant shore.
A decade later,
taking his place
with the adults at work,
he stared out the same windows
for fifty years
engineering valves
deep within the walls
of the booming city,
walking the night miles,
gaze open to the sky.
In later years
he lived by the salt sea in Queens,
strolling with my grandmother
along the boardwalk
heavily clothed,
Italian ices blooming
red, pink, yellow,
the t-shirted toughs
patrolling the bleached wooden walkway,
vendors hawking the cotton candy of desire,
the carnival of chance and opportunity.
At the last,
he read of Adam and Job,
pondered the origins of
meteors and constellations,
the inner workings of famous lives,
sometimes walking his world
with his grandchildren’s
questions
before being hummed to sleep
in his armchair
by the wavering buzz
from the midnight radio.
Sunny days he sat
bundled up on the beach,
arm shielding against the sun’s glare
off the Atlantic,
face lost
beneath a wide brimmed hat,
body shrunken inside
the labyrinth of clothes,
swallowing vitamins
while the saltwater air
rusted the doors off his Ford.
After he died,
we found a photograph
long forgotten:
He is maybe seventeen,
standing in the ocean among friends,
wearing two toned trunks and swim top,
appearing striped and happy
in the zebra fashion of the day.
It’s a picture of a boy
in the last splashes of youth,
and the image of a man
working his way out
of the crashing grey waters,
one of the millions
leaving the wild wash of the waves
to take one pilgrim step forward
forever
back to the motionless land.
• • •
Leonard Lang is the co-founder and editor of BoomerLitMag. His last poetry appearance here was eight years ago. You can read his bio in the “About Us” section of the magazine.