Izaac on the house

Izaac on the house All alone, Izaac is up there, along side the chimney (which is the highest part). Izaac remembers to hold on with one hand while the other floats in front of his face: tiny pores, freckles, dusty knuckles, thick wrist, leathery banded watch with hands, one on four, one on six. Izaac looks at the watch look back, busy tick swirling. "Squint," says Izaac, "squint, that makes me remember better." Which hand is longer doesn't show in this moonlight and the streetlamp is too far, by Johnsons', and anyway, it is way past time for anything right to happen, except to look, to look up from his perch next to the chimney, holding the TV antenna. "Which wire is busted?", whispers Izaac, which reminds him: "I want to be a Telephone man, see in backyards all up and down at once, funny shapes dogs can be from up the pole, canvas gloves, the robin egg blue hat like turtles, like I never saw before except in books and Channel 13." Sam Crenshaw let Izaac wear his lineman hat: it felt warm and touched his hair quiet and soft like Dad's hand at the fair, two?, ten Augusts past and Izaac wants to remember it all. All at once just for once like everybody on his block except him, except parts fly and flip and hop, so the story in his head doesn't ever tell the same. Squint, squint the night slows. Izaac breathes slowly. Lets his feet find new toe grips on the ridge. Lets his fingers wriggle piccolo player on the fat aluminum pole: Channel 13 showed big hands with dark coatcuffs squeeze 207 a piccolo and it was a tiny bird in trouble, then a shrill whistle but more, a whistle not like the cheeze factory, but like a telephone in trouble, yes, like a telephone in trouble. Izaac lets his brain go. He feels it fumble, numb, flutter. Sit exactly on the edge. Let go, let go. Let go. Let go. for Clay J. 12-10-91 Rex Walton Lincoln, Nebraska 208 ...