The Sherman, The Grant, The Eldest
The General Sherman bounds 1,487m3
all wood
***
Like a bird god lean and hard
Sherman surveys Atlanta
His face bewhiskered, pockmarked
his choice to end this here
An eagle, wings wide, screams
from his saddle blanket
But he holds silent on his bright bay
a white star on its forehead
His stepparents had feared his given name
“William, William, William” they cooed
Years forward he would listen, white conqueror,
killer of buffalo
But now Tecumseh senses his calm first self
the full clarity of his plan
“War is cruelty,” he would say to the mayor,
“you can not refine it”
At Ebenezer Creek he would say nothing
pull up pontoons on the freed
Pressing forward through farmland and swampland
to the sea
***
The General Grant spreads 12m
at the base
***
Up near Grant’s tomb the sidewalk is paved
in dark Hastings hexagons
Down Riverside Park his Grand Army
still links
In six-sided formation, each man low
silent
Two preteen descendants of those Sherman
abandoned
At Ebenezer Creek throw stones
down toward the Hudson
Caring as much for sunbathers on the slope
below
As Tecumseh cared for their
great great greats
Or as Grant, numbers man in his foursquare
martial tomb
Cared for any one element in his set
of superior numbers
Without whom it is hard to say where two free boys
might now be
***
The unnamed eldest resides in orbits countless
of a hot quiet sun
***
High above the vast scraped valley
the eldest abides
In haze hidden Californian Elysium
a millennium old
Already, when the Greek general descended
to the valley of the Indus
He thought from the crocodiles a tributary
to the Nile
And tested his army against warriors and elephants
of a seven-foot king
And cresting a small rise encountered a sage
unmoved and unafraid
As confident in the ageless multiplicity
of lives
The unceasing arising and passing
the true nature
As the eldest still feels confident in mountains
steep and scratchy
In winter snow melting to green blue torrents
in canyons
In black raven wings of evening and fierce cold stars
of night
And in orbiting once again to face a hot quiet sun
of day
Eyes in the Warehouse
KISW’s electric lunch
buzzes through hot warehouse of exhaust pipes
dangling by hangers on high cylinders
far deep in Duwamish tide flat dredge lands
earthquake bottom, gray old Kingdome to north
Sound bounces Miss August she of shipping
room calendar up there over tape guns
used by Holly and Rob and Rod and me
her naked body a boon and salve to
us all in dark wood beam mail cave, I think
Her eyes still peek out from the shadowed wall
when we flip the switch like Jeff’s cheap dad wants
drizzle light only now in shipping room
from clerestory windows lined far up filtering
through gray pipe forest, upside-down smog roots
Years later all beams for that yellow place
with sad odors of motor oil cardboard
urinal and forklift spew disappear
fade away like the cedar alder fir
forest the beams came from, the little stream
There were eyes near that stream in drizzle light
somewhere far deep down peeking through trees like
beaver, ogress, raven, orca, eagle
lined up bottom to top of totem pole
in Ish river cobble soil, distant time
Miss August eyes, raven eyes, beaver eyes
eyes of the many presences watch us
observe in the air as bloody red sun
burns into tree shadows and cave places
Seattle breathes smoke, fires burn upcountry
Musket
You have the right to bear a musket
and to practice your musketry
on the musket range
You have the right to tip your arquebus
and jam down it a powder packet
of cloth with your cold metal rod
To that powder packet you have the right, please,
drop sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter down your muzzle
and feel that perfect explosion at barrel’s bottom
You may fire your flintlock once per minute
for any revolutionary war re-enactment
at Lexington, Concord, or Valley Forge State Park
Mosquette is French for sparrowhawk
and you may hunt French sparrowhawks
if they allow it there
Moschetto is Italian for musket and for fly
but not the kind my student unzipped
the day of the too-long school lockdown
AR-15 is not a musket you may bear
nor one that Madison could have imagined
in Virginia days of yore and slaves ...
... and words in iron gall ink on animal skin
in a museum that speak of your right to bear
a musket