Poems by Jack Eisenman

Local poet Jack Eisenman takes us on a Journey through a memory of Toys, Swings and things we have loved.   

Journey

I walk this dream each day, 
A path at times dark, 
Sometimes sunny, 
Always alone.

No signs announce my destination,
Nor miles to get there.
Perhaps it’s around the next curve,
Maybe a ten-year trek. 

I have a mandate,
An inward injunction to continue
With promise of reward
At the finish line.

I walk this dream each day,
A path at times dark,
Sometimes sunny,
Always alone.


Judy’s Swing

The entire Bailey Street 300 block had swing envy
of the girl two doors down from 319.

Kids came from as far away as 387 to stand in line
for a one-minute float through the sky,
soaring so high toes brushed leaves
on the lowest maple limb which
must have been twelve feet from the grass
but seemed Jack in the bean stalk high.

Every kid anticipated the grand climax, the jump.
The jump, a leap of faith that between letting go,
flying through the air, and hitting the ground
eight-year old’s lives would not flash before them.


19

I am twenty-first century’s Black Death,
Great grandson to all pandemics,
Foreshadow of scourges to come.
Omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal.

Cower, sequester, quarantine,
Mask to no avail. I come for you.
I win. You lose. You die.

What’s with the needle?


Omega

That day I walked the tracks
No whistle blew
No wheels rumbled
No black smoke

Just weeds
Rusted rails

And thoughts
Of men
Who shouldered beams
Held spikes
Swung hammers
Built steel ribbons
For eternity


Sugar-Coated

This five-year-old borrowed
a nickel from mother’s purse
for the purchase of a lifetime.

Five pennies bought a bag full
of candy back in those days,
back when I began to learn
right from wrong.

My small bag looked galactic
filled with Mary Janes,
marshmallow bananas,
wax juice bottles, gum balls
and sweet fake cigarettes.

I didn’t see mother on the porch
until within fifteen feet of home,
too late to stash the sack.


Old House

The kind in Georgia above the gnat line
somewhere east of Atlanta near Athens.
A late 1800’s or early twentieth century
two story clapboard with front porch
where country folk sit on autumn nights
beneath magnolias and oaks and listen
to acorns fall on a tin roof.