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Sidewalk Cracks, a poem by Norbert Krapf

 

 


 


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.