Light Fingers Poem by Ron Slate

Feather duster in a child's grip
swished over bottles of Old Grand-Dad
in my father's liquor store,
my hand hovering briefly
above rolls of coin in the cash drawer,

other objects stolen from local merchants -
a magnifying glass,
a hi-lo thermometer, an Indian rubber baseball,
novelties, candy, cigarettes:

If you wouldn't give me what I deserved,
what you seemed to promise,
then I would take it from you.
The splendor of scissors.
The consideration of a rubber stamp
'for your attention.'

At some point, after the accumulation
of the objects of desire,
and later, after they became unforgettable,
beyond understanding and useless,

this is when I looked back and saw the boy
making a daring effort to be part
of the family's sadness.

All of the grief that preceded me -
war, fire, the destruction of culture,
the powerlessness of parents,
the compensations of shameful inward lives -

this, I perceived, is simply what it means
to be human. So now there is nothing
to wrest into myself,
for myself.
But there is the spirit leaping with dread

and exultation, demanding everything.
And the old cunning.

When Mrs. O'Brien suggested that Joseph,
her son, and I go to see his priest
about our common venal behavior,
my mother, a Holocaust survivor,
threw her out of the house.

I returned to my favorite pastime:
a book of sleight-of-hand tricks,
small objects, all objects, vanishing.