9. Harbor Beach I

I.

One night
wishing
I could whistle
I recognized (not for the first time)
my grandfather
was a great man.

He warned me of Jack Frost,
who would call on an old black
ro-tar-y dial telephone
every time I ran into the basement.

I’m not sure what,
he’d say of me now,
or what my contemporaries
would think of him.