WHEN THE BOY COMES BACK

I’m not too aware of him—he’s shy
and it’s easy for me to miss the sounds
and smells of his past:
the click of beads on an abacus
counting bushels of corn,
the cool swell of a glass doorknob
on a classroom door.

Or his hand warm from working the projector,
his ears come alive to the tick of the film strip
rising notch by notch, his alertness torn
between dust motes dancing above the fan
and the emulsion embossing the walls
with pictures of Mexico and Japan.

On such a night,
I hear him cranking the mimeograph drum,
mixing its violet smell
with the odor of oil in the rails of a slide rule—
an aroma as metallic as a brake in a machine shop,
where the boys bent els and smoothed their edges.