lystn

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman SMOKEBy Philip LevineCan you imagine the air filled with smoke?It was. The city was vanishing before noonor was it earlier than that? I can't say becausethe light came from nowhere and went nowhere. This was years ago, before you were born, beforeyour parents met in a bus station downtown.She'd come on Friday after work all the wayfrom Toledo, and he'd dressed in his only suit. Back then we called this a date, some timesa blind date, though they'd written back and forthfor weeks. What actually took place is now lost.It's become part of the mythology of a family, the stories told by children around the dinner table.No, they aren't dead, they're just treated that way,as objects turned one way and then anotherto catch the light, the light overflowing with smoke. Go back to the beginning, you insist. Whyis the air filled with smoke? Simple. We had work.Work was something that thrived on fire, that withoutfire couldn't catch its breath or hang on for life. We came out into the morning air, Bernie, Stash,Williams, and I, it was late March, a new warwas starting up in Asia or closer to home,one that meant to kill us, but for a moment the air held still in the gray poplars and elmsundoing their branches. I understood the moonfor the very first time, why it came and went, whyit wasn't there that day to greet the four of us. Before the bus came a small black bird settledon the curb, fearless or hurt, and turned its beak upas though questioning the day. "A baby crow,"someone said. Your father knelt down on the wet cement, his lunchbox balanced on one knee and stared quietlyfor a long time. "A grackle far from home," he said.One of the four of us mentioned tenderness,a word I wasn't used to, so it wasn't me. The bus must have arrived. I'm not there today.The windows were soiled. We swayed this way and thatover the railroad tracks, across Woodward Avenue,heading west, just like the sun, hidden in smoke.