Sidewalk Cracks
The boy who didn’t
want to step on cracks
in the sidewalk
played a brilliant organ
and the big company
in the small town
hired him to show
how beautiful their
organs could sound.
His fingers had the touch
to make those organs sing
but the sidewalks had
so many cracks he
could not keep up
with his job of stepping
over all of them. He had
nightmares about what
would happen if he
stepped on a crack.
In his recurring dreams
he saw so many
cracks coming at him
that eventually his fingers
stiffened and he could no
longer make the organ
sing. Sadness froze
across his face. He lost
his job with the company
and one day he disappeared
into a crack that opened
so wide he could not
step over it. Nobody
knows where he is.
Norbert Krapf, a former Indiana Poet Laureate, has published fourteen collections, the latest being Indiana Hill Country Poems and Southwest by Midwest. His collection Spirit Sister Dance will appear in 2022, as will his prose memoir Homecomings: A Writer's Memoir. For more information please see www.krapfpoetry.net.