Ode To Rocks
In pockets and gardens, under
our beds for miners carry
a fair share in long gray
pails with jugs of soup
near shanks and flesh
with crusts plus those
stored in the chests.
The spare parts of the world
cast about pose a craving
as deep as the ocean is long
as the rivers are wide. A record
of perennial harvests hauled
up from stopes through gob-shite
on ladders of iron out the Judeah
the William Jennings Bryan, Red Jacket,
Cole and Cambell
the Eagle Eye Nagasaki to the north
Beloved fountains of slag
pour into banks of remains
where genuflection pays
paper for gold and time with loss.
Poor men fair well in shifts,
forever on the way in or out
with dirt clinging, dirt in love
with the heroic skin, part
ancient shroud part, let me in.
