The Old Furnace
((on: Albemarle Street) (1997))
When
I bought the old house on Albemarle Street—a turn of
the century, Victorian style house—the old 1940s style furnace come with it.
The first winter it choked
off and on, now and then, throughout the night, this was back in ’97—
You could hear her old ribs
rattling from radiator to radiator: hear
It spit and sputter
thought-out the rooms of the house!
Each summer, for nine
summers, I’d have her cleaned out,
Like pumping her stomach
dry, and refilling her with water,
Getting her copper tubing hotter
than a dentist’s drill, and her iron belly hotter than a pistol’s barrow after
shooting a hundred rounds…
You could spit on the
furnace door, and she’d sizzle—
The rooms would swell with
heat, the gas at full blast surging underneath her torso;
And that old furnace man
would tell me each summer: “She’ll make it one more winter I think, if you keep
up, the upkeep!”
I couldn’t imagine
otherwise!
Written 6-2-2014 (No:
4356)
