Somerville poet Kirk Etherton writes the LYRICAL: “I witnessed this little “scene” one morning last year in Union Square. (I had just parked my car, but waited to get out because there was some interesting jazz piece playing on Harvard’s radio station.) For some reason  it made a real impression on me, and I wrote this poem later that day.”

*

After turning off my car in the
Citizens Bank parking lot

I look across the street and see a
mother sweeping her pavement front yard
while her dark-haired daughter
(perhaps aged two) tricycles herself
along an imaginary line
back and forth between
their home  cement front steps and
the wall of their neighbor: the
Oil Change & Auto Care Center.

Baby, belted into his stroller,
looks on and around. I watch until
a high-rise pickup truck draws a
curtain on the scene. The driver climbs
down from behind a tinted windshield,
walks away from his mobile
glass-and-metal screen.

Before the song on my car radio ends
he returns, climbs up, pulls out—the small family
cast is nowhere to be seen. To the left now
a mechanic’s singing air-wrench glints in view;

above, the Goodyear logo is a
yellow plastic boot against
a painted wall of blue.

– Kirk Etherton

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To have your work considered for the Lyrical send it to:
Doug Holder, 25 School St.; Somerville, MA 02143.
dougholder@post.harvard.edu