first taste of an allegheny river fog when you're early enough & the deer are still bedded down

for a thirteen-year-old

it seemed like a long greyhound ride

from cleveland heights to rural pennsylvania

just after my thirteenth birthday

life changing you might call it

like from winkie's sixteen-cent hamburgers

at the corner of cedar & lee

to throwing hay bales in 90 degree heat

we lived in a 32-foot trailer

but by the time theresa

& butch & johnny joined us

we were busting at the seams

in spite of this radical departure

theresa knew how to make sense out of it all

like when we all piled into the turquoise ford

and went down to pittsburgh for a pete seeger concert

worried man blues

we seemed to live it

so i ran the hills of butler county

like i was on a mission

like i was roger bannister

but without a country

on the first day of school

my eighth grade history teacher

said to the class "are there any jews here?"

as everyone turned to me olive skin & curly dark hair

so it only seemed natural that we would

settle everything on the wrestling mat

or the rutty 440 yard running track

circling the football field

i never believed acceptance

had to be earned

like who said inalienable rights

needed gatekeepers

by the time we moved again

the allegheny was coughing up blood

i traded down to a trench coat

and a turned-up collar

there were streetcars that could sing harmony

but the fog never lifted

as far as i could tell

--- e b bortz