Poem for my father's city

[alethea7]

I've been feeling creative lately. Here is my latest effort.

Last week my father told me
In 1914, when my great-grandfather came through Ellis Island
The customs officers made him change
The spelling of our name.
It couldn’t be “Fotides”
It had to be “Ph” ---Like photograph, photosynthesis
Those are Greek words they said
And wrote down “Photiades”

A change in sponsor
Placed him in Detroit instead of North Carolina
On the assembly line instead of the cotton fields
“Just think,” my father said,
“What if we’d ended up in North Carolina?”
“We’d be a bunch of hicks” I laughed
And bucked my teeth.

Maybe my father would have grown up
Whistling Dixie through the tall grass
Instead of running across the Lodge to retrieve his baseball
Or become a racist
Instead of colorblind

There’d be no stealing tea cakes from the old ladies of Boston-Edison
No roof-jumping on Webb Avenue
No iconic dome of Saint Nick’s
No walks down Monroe and Beaubien
Under the fluttering Greek flags
Strung across the street

Of course there are none of these things today
The only Detroit I have known
Is more imagined than actualized
Where my father’s stories are my only proof
That this city was once alive
And though there has been change
Nothing will bring back Henry Ford, the factories
Or my father’s chrome-reflected childhood

But it is better to be here, I think
Aware of what was, what is and what could be
Able to see my family’s first house still standing
Able to visit my Yaya and Papoo
In the same place there are Dodges and Fords buried
Instead of a place where nothing changes
Like North Carolina