Monday, February 08, 2021

stephen dunn | stories


It was back when we used to listen to stories,
     our minds developing
pictures as we were taken into the elsewhere

 

of our experience or to the forbidden
     or under the sea.
Television was wrestling, Milton Berle,

 

Believe It Or Not. We knelt before it
     like natives
in front of something sent by parachute,

 

but when grandfather said “I’ll tell you a story,”
     we stopped with pleasure,
sat crosslegged next to the fireplace, waited.

 

He’d sip gin and hold us, his voice
     the extra truth
beyond what we believed without question.

 

When grandfather died and changed
     what an evening meant,
it was 1954. After supper we went

 

to the television, innocents in a magic land
     getting more innocent,
a thousand years away from Oswald and the shock,

 

the end of our enormous childhood.
     We sat still
for anything, laughed when anyone slipped

 

or lisped or got hit with a pie. We said
     to our friends
“What the hey?” and punched them in the arms.

 

The television had arrived, and was coming.
     Throughout the country
all the grandfathers were dying,


giving their reluctant permission, like Indians.



"Stories" by Stephen Dunn

from Local Time, Quill Press, 1986