*

Dan Sklar, our poet writes: “The chair of Endicott College’s English Department hired me in 1987 because of this poem about my paper route. He had one too. I have been teaching creative writing at Endicott ever since. I was the youngest member of the faculty, now I am the oldest. This spring I will be done. Who says poetry doesn’t do anything?”

March Winds

I was a paperboy for the Long Island Press,
twelve years old, wanting to be alone.
Home from school, the stack of newspapers
on the stoop. I’d cut the string,
split the stack in two, put them in the baskets
over the back fender of the red Robin Hood
three-speed English racer. With crew-cut,
I pushed through March winds,
folding newspapers and placing them in
mailboxes and screen doors of little
development houses, patchy lawns
in Blue Point, New York,1965.
Each house had its own warm sour smell.
Wind swept across the Great South Bay
where I stopped to have a Milky Way,
to see oystermen on the beach,
and ice sailors glide across the ice.
I can still feel my fingers freezing,
wind whizzing over my ears.
I would drop a newspaper on the bar
of the Republican Club on Atlantic Avenue
where pasty men in tight suits
sat with blank expressions.
I grabbed a handful of peanuts,
hopped on my bike and raced
up the gray pebbly driveway, lined with
tall pine trees, to tiny houses where old men
cooked supper at four in the afternoon.
The March winds stung my face.
I waved to some friends, Emily Miller,
Eric Leifson, Kathy McKenna.
As the sun went down, lights shone brightly
in every room at home. Bicycle in the garage,
I could smell beef stew and apple pie.
I splashed hot water on my face
at the kitchen sink. My dog, Happy, 
jumped all over me and we wrestled
on the kitchen floor.
I wish we never stopped wrestling.

— Daniel Sklar

Daniel Sklar

P.S. In 1838, nineteen-year-old Walt Whitman wrote his newspaper, the Long Islander, and then distributed it on his white horse, Nina.

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