Before The Flood Poem by Brendan Constantine

My father remembers nothing. Or rather
he remembers where it used to be - See
that building? When I was a kid there was
nothing there. And next door, where
the school is, nothing.

We walk through his hometown, down
a street with an Indian name no Indian
lives to translate. It means Dream River,
he says, or Rambling; Confused River
I used to know.

..........................No one believes
their parents were children. That is, you
need more than their word. They have to
do something: stifle laughter, cry into
their hands, stand tiptoe. We all look

younger on tiptoe. My father peers
over a fence, another new building.
This was all sand, he says, for Bethlehem,
Bethlehem Steel. His shoe is untied.
He bends to lace it, I almost help. Later

I reach for his hand at a crosswalk.
Let's go back, he says. To how
it was? No, to the house; I need
to lie down. We turn and the town
surges under our feet, comes over us

in a wooden tide. I get my arms under his,
kick for both of us. He doesn't try,
doesn't speak when his house goes by.