What Good Would It Be 

If the city you created never showed you its back?
Never screamed a curse at you?
Never set an orange sign in front of your car?
Never pushed aside the anise and the cow parsnip 
To stare at you with yellow eyes
And snarl:  "Cyclops lives!  This time you better get it right!"

Do you function like you used to?
Do you feel the same feelings?
Can you still see the leaves of the pin oak
The scattered evidence
Of a squirrel's game
The runes of sunlight
Spelling their riddles 
Shifting and shifting 
Until the prose becomes music
A fugue of guitars and organ
And you descend 
Into the medieval past
Of your own childhood

When Europe was all, her forests,
Her commons, 
Brought whole 
With cradle 
And sampler
And shuttles 
Worn smooth--
To your cabin, 
With its wasps in the walls,
Its old willow, 
Its white winter sun.

And your school, 
Don't forget, now, 
Up there on the hill, 
Remember the way? 

And always the trees, 
Offering dryness 
When all was wet
Offering darkness 
When all was light
Offering newness
When all was spent.  
And even then you 
Felt them--
Like deep music
Or powerful wine
Before you knew

What drunkenness was--

Before you knew
The terrible 
Anesthetized dream
That adult drunkenness
Was.

And now what do they say,
Those beleagured giants?
Their promise is gone
But they offer more now,
In a way:
They offer proof.

A Toast

I thought to drink

The last of my vacation

In this glass, 

This mid-summer amber, 

This hard-won 

Fruit of the cane, 

I thought to 

Remember it so, 

Free of the tangle of 

Savage vines, 

Thorned whips, 

Secret holes 

That would eat my ankles.  

I thought to honor my 

Elders, knowing too well

My own lower grade; 

But without resentment, 

With nothing but 

Gratitude, 

Nothing but pride 

For that measure given.  

I thought to salute my 

Working brothers and sisters,

As poor a mate as I, 

Thankful for those lessons taught.  

I thought to remember 

My departed friend,

My childhood gone with him, 

With this medicine 

That cures all hope.  

I saw his face then,

Wise, calm, maybe turned to the 

Lowering sun--

And I, abashed, 

Having stumbled into 

That far-away campsite 

A famished ghost 

And bewildered 

To find myself there

After all that running.  

For my crew at work, a bridge from past to present:  this fragment from my days with Long, deep in the dust and heat of Intel Ronler Acres. 

"Friday

"I thought it was a woman's drink," Vargas said.  "Gene gave me one and I drank it down in one gulp; I was like whoof."  Stan leans forward.  "It is a woman's drink," I said.  "It is almost all whiskey."  We are on the night bus, all loud, all painters, almost all in Section 3, except Atanacio (or Nacho), who is not parked in Section 3, but in Section 1, because, he said, "They don't let me park there."  He looks down after informing us and continues to clean his 5-in-1.

One day just before the toolbox meeting Joe turned to one of us with a dazed smile and said "Look what Nacho did for me."  He held out his 5-in-1 and I could see its edge gleaming.  "You could fuckin' cut paper with it," Joe said.  "Did he use a grinder?" the other said.  "No, man," Joe said.  "He used another knife or something.  That is sharp."  I thought of all the 5-in-1s I had found at the bottom of the tool crib, their edges permanently fouled by grey and white epoxies.  I turned to Nacho.  He was leaning against the neighbor's trailer, scraping his hardhat.  This, in fact, is what he does most of the time during the bull session and toolbox meetings.

Another time, in the trenches, now long since covered over by concrete walls, steel cladding and miles of pipe, we were squatting and kneeling with our angle grinders, occasionally tilting up our face shields to read the profiles we had made in the concrete, when Darby appeared above the edge, backlit and muffled by his half mask.  "That looks like shit, Nacho," he said through the respirator.  For some reason Nacho was uncovered.  Probably it was breaktime.  "Yeah, it look like shit," he said, tired.  "Everything look like shit."

For some reason, though, this Friday, there is no implied tension, though we are in just as much a hurry as any other time.  Even Lance seems more relaxed; while we are wrapping up for the night, coiling cords, stuffing trash bags, he reminds me to look for the most beautiful place on earth, a place in Wyoming whose name, I blush to relate, I have forgotten again.*  While he tells me about it his motions are rapid and purposeful, but it is cleanup and everyone is suddenly sure of what they're doing:  they're going home.  Tools are stowed in the tent, dirty thinner is poured through funnels, grips are packed, to the rhythm of the statement "Let's get the fuck OUT of here" in a kind of subterranean jazz beat.  But in the prelude, while Jesus and I are saturating and laying fiberglass on an equipment pad, instead of quizzing us on our procedure, he chats about the problems of the crew downstairs and occasionally shows us the silvery spots in the material that mean holidays--  as if there was no piano-sized deadline dangling over our heads and this was some kind of class and he was the instructor.

And so later, when he mentions Vedauwoo, I can see the same expression on his face as he looks through his windshield at the passing granite towers and sage forests of his home.

*Vedauwoo, Wyoming.  http://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Vedauwoo&params=41.178396_N_-105.356312_E_

4/4/19:

Tiny Bradshaw - slick cut snowdrop stems - cheap lager