Immigrant song

By Henry Israeli

Robert Plant’s primal yell propelled us
through FM radios we listened to in glorious
stereo on the same station at the same time
in cars almost too wide to fit in a lane.
We children of immigrants joined his blissful
howl generations deep declaring that
from the land of ice and snow we came,
landing on far off shores, ending up
on the streets of suburbs where sprinklers
wake us every morning all summer long,
where families fashion themselves anew
like gloms made of blood and snow
As we rode bikes past the brown brick houses
we heard different accents, different mouths
struggling to speak words of a new language
behind every door of our circular street.
Back then we were all immigrants and knew it:
we ate kielbasa, kishka, ballpark dogs,
and watery chop suey on Christmas eve, danced
with our hands high in the air aping
Anthony Quinn’s Zorba on TV, we blew our noses
a hundred different ways. At night, if you stood
below our windows you could hear us singing.