Poem of the Month
Kate Bernadette Benedict
Three Men A poem of thanksgiving
-------------------Tony, the oil man, would totter
down our alleyway at five a.m. or six
to fill our furnace with his aromatic fuel.
He must have had a second sight
for dwindling resources:
we never ran out
and we never had to call him.
From bed I’d hear his rolling footsteps,
crunching snow
or tapping pavement,
then that reassuring thrum—
transfusion, satiety.
For twenty years he served us
and we paid him, cheerfully.
Doctor Lynch, my pediatrician,
made house calls too.
He diagnosed the mumps and roseola.
He cured me of pneumonia
with his magic shots
and got me to a surgeon
before my own appendix poisoned me.
I trusted his wide hands.
He seemed to understand what I was up against
in that narrow house
with its manifest contentions.
When I screamed at him once
in a teenage rage,
he didn’t take offense,
he contained it:
the insult, the profanity.
Mr. Hogan had a terrible job.
He drove the special bus
that transported us to high school.
At Pelham Parkway,
we loaded on, sixty of us, eighty—
Catholic kids rollicking wild
before the classroom’s austere disciplines.
The din was piercing,
worse than monkeys screeching,
and the air was thick with hairspray
and talcum and B.O.
I’d scramble for a seat in front
so I could watch him fuming,
his knuckles whitening
as he gripped the wide wheel.
I’d study his pitted face,
his veiny nose,
and note his brow slowly unravelling
as the bus emptied.
I’d sit with him in solidarity, enthralled.
In what is called an outer borough
three peripheral men were utterly central.
I wish I’d thanked each one of them,
for his fidelity,
his dependability,
his ordinary workaday feat—
bearing us to school,
bearing our mayhem,
bringing the heat.