18th And Broadway Poem by Keith Sutton

Down Broadway in Galveston
there is 18th street
if you turn right
for a few blocks
you meet a humble house
still standing
after 50 some years
on Avenue L—or M
not the Post Office road
it is simple
even old
pink rail
empty
the stairs climb up
as only the young can do
the garage below
empty of
a car
the times also indicated by that emptiness.
Butch in diapers
toddling on the uneven sidewalk
sent jokingly to get bread at the corner store
which is still there
He did—well he tried
finally retrieved from an important impossible mission.
there’s mom heavily pregnant
with Margie
tumbling in the grass
dodging bees.
my father
in his spare time
after hours on the dock
pieced together furniture
for Sears.
His first tools were bought for this task
I am told.
There were times on the beach
two children
a boy and a girl
carnivals and sunburns with friends
on the rolling tides of Galveston.
There were hard times and good
seen through the eyes
of an 80 year old woman
who felt them
as only the heart can feel.
There were people and names
lost in the archives of time
but not within her soul
they were alive as if yesterday.
and I lived them with her
today
though they were years and years ago
as if
her life was mine.
Her life
that courses through her blood
her soul
is mine.