Collecte Works (12 page)

make a home out of barrel and stave.

Here it gives the laws for fishing thru the ice—

only one hook to a line,

stay at the hole, can't go in to warm up,

well, we never go fishing, so they can't catch us.

On Columbus Day he set out for the north

to inspect his forty acres,

brought back a plaster of Paris deer-head

and food from the grocers and bakers,

a wall-thermometer to tell if he's cold,

a new kind of paring knife,

and painted in red, a bluebottle gentian

for the queen, his wife.

Black Hawk held: In reason

land cannot be sold,

only things to be carried away,

and I am old.

Young Lincoln's general moved,

pawpaw in bloom,

and to this day, Black Hawk,

reason has small room.

We know him—Law and Order League—

fishing from our dock,

testified against the pickets

at the plant—owns stock.

There he sits and fishes

stiff as if a stork

brought him, never sprang from work—

a sport.

The clothesline post is set

yet no totem-carvings distinguish the Niedecker tribe

from the rest; every seventh day they wash:

worship sun; fear rain, their neighbors' eyes;

raise their hands from ground to sky,

and hang or fall by the whiteness of their all.

I said to my head, Write something.

It looked me dead in the face.

Look around, dear head, you've never read

of the ground that takes you away.

Speed up, speed up, the frosted windshield's

                          a fern spray.

Grampa's got his old age pension,

$15 a month,

his own food and place.

But here he comes,

fiddle and spitbox…

Tho't I'd stop with you a little,

Harriut,

you kin have all I got.

There's a better shine

on the pendulum

than is on my hair

and many times

       ..    ..

I've seen it there.

The museum man!

I wish he'd taken Pa's spitbox!

I'm going to take that spitbox out

and bury it in the ground

and put a stone on top.

Because without that stone on top

it would come back.

That woman!—eyeing houses.

She's moved in on my own poor guy.

         She held his hand and told him where to sign.

He gives up costs on his tree-covered shack—

insurance against wind, fire, falling aircraft, riots—

         home itself, was our break in the thick.

Because look! How can she keep it?—

to hold a house has to rent it out

        and spend her life on the street.

Hand Crocheted Rug

Gather all the old, rip and sew

the skirt I've saved so long,

Sally's valance, the twins' first calico

and the rest I worked to dye.

Red, green, black, hook,

hitch, nevermind, cramped

around back not yet the turn