Ten
Let’s dig a tunnel, my friend said.
It was 1964. Maybe he knew
of Berliners hustling under the wall.
Maybe we’d seen The Great Escape
and lacked access to a hot bike
like Steve McQueen rode
through the fraught airspace.
What we didn’t know—
that we were inviting a brigade
of alley rats and several divisions
of beetles and mites—that the earth
could collapse and swallow us—
that we had nowhere to go
and nothing to flee—that going down
means going back in time,
finding chunks of a concrete
incinerator and clinkers from another age.
Wizened, I’d lug myself back,
shovel in hand, just to emerge,
as we would before dinner,
to ride a rope swing into the clouds
above Detroit’s lawns and cars,
to plod home filthy and face again
my mother’s astonished opprobrium.
Michael Lauchlan has contributed to many publications, including New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Sugar House Review, Louisville Review, Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, Rhino, and Poetry Ireland. His most recent collection is Trumbull Ave., from WSU Press (2015).