Poem-A-Day April 29: a series of warnings, but also magic

Heart On Fire

As a foster child, my grandfather learned not
to get in trouble. Mexican and motherless—dead
as she was from tuberculosis—he practiced words
in a new language and kept his slender head down.
When the other boys begged him to slip into
the music shop’s upper window to steal harmonicas
for each of them, music being important, thievery
being secondary, he refused. When the cops came
to spot the boys who robbed the music store, they
could easily find the ones splitting broken
notes into the air, joyously mouthing the stainless
steel, mimicking men on street corners busking
for coins. But not my grandfather, he knew not
to risk it all for a stolen moment of exultation.
It’s easy to imagine this is who I come from, a line
of serious men who follow the rules, but might I add
that later he was a dancer, a singer, an actor whose best roles
ended up on the cutting room floor. A cutup, a ham
who liked a good story. Who would have told you
life was a series of warnings, but also magic. Once,
he was sent for a box of matches and he put that box
of strike-anywheres in the pocket of his madras shirt
and ran home, he ran so fast to be on time, to be good,
and when he did so, the whole box ignited, so he was
a boy running down the canyon road with what
looked like a heart on fire. He’d laugh when he told
you this, a heart on fire, he’d say, so you’d remember.

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