Bells and Whistles

Through the hazy, fog-whisped smalltown air 

of my schoolday morning

I hear the bells for Mass at Holy Angels

and the low, asthmatic whistles 

of the factories down by the poisoned river.

My mother makes breakfast

and I dress for school, but

I know that men in gray work clothes

will now swing lunch buckets

off kitchen counters painted white.

My father is gone two hours already 

to his window at the Post Office,

but my uncle is among these men

and my neighbors

and the fathers of my friends.

Across town

and around the corner

and in the next street over

and in the slate-sided houses

of Buckeye Terrace,

men with gray knuckles

clothes that smell of tobacco and machine oil

and hearts thickening in their chests

leave, under the call of the whistles,

for Liberty Folder, LeRoy, Mack,

and the river-fouling tannery

and the nameless foundries

where my grandfather caught the red lung that killed him.

They do not complain.

It is not in them to complain.

A word to the wife

a word to the kids

an ear to the great solemn bells

toiling in the catholic steeple

and out the door 

and into the chill, fog-dark,

bell-bespoken

whistle-haunted streets

to the places where

they make their living and their death.

---

Michael Henson

Michael Henson is author of six books of fiction and four collections of poetry. His best-known work is Maggie Boylan, a collection of linked stories centered on a woman struggling with poverty and addiction in rural Appalachia. He is a member of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative and plays guitar with the Carter Bridge Bluegrass Band.