plague

i don't think there are too many of us

reading this

who have lived through a plague

the closest thing we might know about

or have heard about

might be the great depression of the 1930s

so let my story begin there

winters in cleveland usually go thru the sub-zero

when nothing moves

& if you're outside you need many layers

to survive frostbite

in the 30s my dad and his buddy fred survived in a grimy old gas station

repairing batteries      selling jumper cables

gasoline of course

fixing radiators and cooling systems 

selling used tires by way of my dad's brother-in-law

those tires usually following a surreptitious route

round-about through a dozen hands

sometimes back to the original owner

and there was no guarantee there would be supper

but when necessary

my dad and his comrades rallied a crowd

along east 105th street to intercede and put a tenant's furniture

back into their apartment

eviction was an act of war

and when the unemployed marched on city hall

nobody threw loaves of bread to the hungry

they were called a mob and that was usually followed

by police nightsticks

no one paid much attention to the down-ticks

or up-ticks of the stock market

this wasn't the real economy

but your next meal

     was

by 1937 the fight against fascism in spain

was raging

     a plague of another kind

my dad put down his tools

bid goodbye to his pal fred & the gas station

and joined the abraham lincoln brigade

to beat back the franco-hitler-mussolini axis

but make no mistake about it

the spanish mountains and deserts

could freeze the blood in your veins

     as red as they might be

leaving you with the heat of a roma blanket

     a vision

     a lifetime song

the plague be damned

--- e b bortz