Portside

Not Our Tribe

By Jed Myers

My daughter writes, to all those     

who follow her on the web, my eyes            

are the same as my father’s. She means

to reassure herself they are not

so strange. But mine are a stranger’s

eyes, as were my grandfather’s, open

late like the immigrant grocer’s lit

with the awnings up after midnight, eyes

whose lids jittered in sleep, disturbed

by the deep vigilance behind. His eyes

kept watch for his loved ones’ safety,

spied 60th & Cedar from the porch,

scoured the faces ahead as we advanced

through Rittenhouse Square or 30th Street

Station or down 54th toward Murray’s

for Nova and whitefish on Sundays. Those eyes

adjusted the unspoken levels of risk

by the millisecond. I saw the near-

imperceptible grimaces of that business

on the live graph of his face as he squeezed

my arm for no evident reason again

in the A&P checkout line. And when he did 

let his eyes close over for a brief drift

into the night, he had his ears

take a shift. Listen, how many sounds

in a quiet row house could be something

metallic and honed as it’s slipped

from its sheath of hide. My grandfather’s

ears would quick wake up those eyes

adapted by our centuries of practice

as unwelcome guests. Such eyes’ irises

dilate for dark coats against starless black.

They diffract silhouettes on horseback

or mufflered motorbikes. These lenses

detect unmarked vans through the rain-glazed

glass of coal-dusted panes as those wagons

kill their lights and roll on to park

beneath our apartments. These eyes

are the same as my ancestors’ scanning

the dunes in sand-wind after dusk.

I look at my daughter’s eyes, the electric

pic by the quote on her posted page.

She’s wrapped in an easy embrace

with a friend. I see the ages’ squint

no joy can erase. It’s the inherited

readiness. To make my peace with it,

I say this: her eyes, our eyes,

must also have earned the keenness

to discern that secret search for trust

in the lines, the clench, the twitch

of the wanderer’s face. The fresh-arrived

clutch of strangers, terribly dressed,

kids pulled tight against shawls and prints

by parents’ spasmodic grips, bus schedules

out under lowered brows, eyes kept

down but we catch them lifting for glimpses

into what’s imminent—our eyes

grasp in those instants, they’re not our tribe,

but we know them as kin by their eyes.

Jed Myers lives in Seattle. He is author of Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award) and two chapbooks. Recent honors include the Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry, The Southeast Review’s Gearhart Poetry Prize, and the McLellan Poetry Prize (UK). Recent poems can be found in Rattle, Poetry Northwest, The Greensboro Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Shining Rock Poetry Anthology, Canary, and elsewhere. He is Poetry Editor for the journal Bracken.