Sawyer

(Wednesday )

Along the rails of mind,

to draw again to this bare room,

a swing of hands, a broken cup,

a man whose fingers counted shingles,

his hands dyed black from redwood slabs.

His mackinaw was fireweed and tar.

In the barren room the parrot's caw,

"What now, goddamn, what now?

What now, what now, goddamn?"

After work, the loneliness, the window;

the shingle-black against the broken cup,

"After work, the wine, goddamn."

The faded parrot's echo from the cage,

"Work and wine, goddamn, what now?"

The sawyer looks to mallow weeds

and dill where rats move quietly.

(Sunday )

The footpedal answers to the hammer

and the feeling moves the black

and wispy hair brushed across his bald spot.

Her narrow back is rounded where she sits;

the movements of her elbows two by two

have excited his imagination

and in the image of her face

he fixes the eyes of feeble blue.

They might have had the radio,

but she had yearned so

and turned away from him

to watch the light upon the keys...

While the chords stammer

and the tone catches on the walls

he can only sit and hold his coffee spoon.

VARLEY McBErH