The Ring of the Bell

I have not named my panic.

That's why possibility
still crouches near embers

and faith yet mumbles
flint with steel
in pockets
on the old shoreline
near dawn.

Heading west,

I can still feel the steel
of the ring
of the bell
in my hands.

Still Don't, Never Will

I was raised up from an imaginary town
and jostled awake.

I was carried
in the ink
past unnamed rivers.

It happened under weary stars - all of it -
under comets
without names.

It sounds romantic:
years,
winters,
decades.

Firsts and seconds.

But it's just simple:

A cartographer's
lazy dream
of blue and red;
marbled terrain
spreading north
where the railroads thin.

I saw what I saw,
and I knew what I knew.

But I didn't see much,
and didn't know enough.

    Still don't. Never will.

Ages

Three men stood
on the shore of a lake
near the start of a river.

Things get confusing after that.

There was that one night,
In that blizzard. Light pulled away from the
library windows and piled up
against trees.

Steel mills came and went.

There were fires.

The sounds of unseen things
moving through forests
leapt up beneath strange stars.

The Burlington Northern
ran slow as sap
in a yearless autumn.

Dreams smeared together:
lightning took the maple
out front,
and we carried the
purple flash
with us for years,
across hard miles,
and dropped it
at the feet of three
men on the shore.

We were children,
and our children were fathers.

Owl-eyed moons
swarmed the end of the age.

Ishpeming

Ishpeming
lit like a porch,
lifted itself
arms open
to a lost pulpit.

All those lakes were
weepers opened up
on a cold face
looking north;

each moment
old,
lit
from the inside
out.

I said a prayer
for my compass
even as I tossed
it to the pile.

All that confounding iron
pushing pine needles
up off the earth,

and a great North,
arms open
to unnamed constellations.

Sometimes

Sometimes, everything pinions.

Everything is changed.

A few people see it, or understand.

They nearly make it to shore
near Wilmette,
but freeze
in the shallows
instead.

They try to remember

for the rest of us,
but give up
and go up over the high ground,
around blind corners,
across the forest borders
without us instead.

A river's edges are nudged
a few degrees west;

The moon becomes a molten eye.

It begins that way:

A blurred, orange comet
bleats ransom and redemption
nonsensically over
your shoulder,
falling
over the miles,

and you stop to rest beneath it.

It's near Christmas, again.

In mud-caked dreams,
your unborn children
try your patience
like a knife dropped in the snow.

Sometimes, everything pinions.

Everything is changed.

A few people see it, or understand.

They nearly make it to shore.

December

I imagined angels
more than once
in moments
same as snow,
slow and sifted,
drifting downward
to this weary earth.

They were there in
black ends of branches
circling
the eye's last
glimpse of night,
singing an endless,
silent reach
with outstretched hands,
and trumpets
stilled and raised.

Sheep and shepherds all
were dizzied beneath
the same stars,
a flurry of dark wings
unfurling suddenly among
December's trees,
where all who'd been hard-taught
to wait were afraid,
but awake
in the expectant night,
listening.

Trouble

The unspoken dream of
hammer on iron -
those black shadows
gathered
to the surface
of the workable form
of the world -

and the night,
brimmed with a
dulling bronze comet,
and gold coals spread
in dying splendor
by cursed heels
along shores.

Words cast out
come back
unanswered
as God's own Silence;
God's own nights
almost lonesome as our own,
nearly sure as traces home.

Immanuel

They built a fire
behind the church;
we pushed ourselves
between the minutes
thick as epochs.
I lost dad in the crowd.
Mixed freight
leaned its height
against the starfield,
and chased the west.
I found a horseshoe.
In some old Christmas,
there were stables,
And God With Us,
wanting us to learn
to be alone.

Noel

All that prairie,
then, and still,
gathering itself
to charcoal lines of
brook and stream,
and shoulders put to snow
and dusk;
And all those nights, same,
their flickerings and
shadows and
whispers and
hope-holding
silences
spilling to void, taking form
in recollection
and retracements,
incessant old ways
cutting over the grain
in the dark.

Each of those
damnable nights
hoped to brick
a testament closed,
but could not quite:

Those days brimmed instead
with winter,
and ill-advised journey.

Locals lit the lift-bridges
like Christmas trees,

And we stayed put.

At night,
We dreamt
the horizons
we displaced in the day;

We awoke in the places
we dreamed.

And there, the shadow of something immense
on the gravel two-lane:
an ambulance overturned;
wheels spinning, grasping
after purchase like the hands
of a broken watch.

We came from among
the edges
and gathered, weeds all,
to the banks of that great road.

Good news.

The Child's eyes are open.

He searches each our faces in the pre-dawn light.

Cautionary

My eyes saw you with those brides,
My old self wanting a drink
And compelling you to have a drink.
God covered a great bridge in old weather,
And clouds came low the way they
do in recollection.

There was a calamity;
Rope-ways in a blizzard
Collapsed and drifted over, maybe;
Or a way home misremembered
Near Christmas.

I told you I'd seen dogs'
fur stand straight across wind
when things in the wind were ill;
When wolves and worse others
ringed up against the dying fire,
and the sun crept up
and fell right back down again.

Traces

When I have watched my hands
break open spark
in hymnal night,
or shake unmeasured
recollection
over the faces
of my sons,
finality
leans itself
against me.

We have gone each
way we ever hoped to go
in this life or that,

and the traces
through the fields
are burnt-up
in the winter sun.

The Crippled Gate

Oh!
This crippled gate;

Dreams of it.

Quick and silenced words
not giving ways through;

And the still-stood night,
same;

silver reach
of prairie-school
stars in branches
bought with moon,

leaves governed down

to curvature
too-soon seen,

seldom known.

And the dark between the stars
shakes like men
chased down empty streets,
and spreads like charcoal
over spark.

From Hecla-Grindstone
to Little Falls,
the hinges are seized,
the gate crippled,
thick

with riddles,
unanswered.

Passing

There is no moving
from underneath

the horizon
gone thick
before,
above,

and avenues
entwined
in thick nests
of dreams.

There was a derecho.
We were
pushed to rivers,
shores.

Our fires lit
a low belly of clouds.

Our eyes were wide,
and gathered to them
dying stars.

The old world is passing;
the way children were;
the way light
came through
church basement windows.

Highline Henry and the Hotshot

(As composed and told to five-year-old Luke late on a clear, cold October night, by a fire under the stars and the whispering leaves. Near the tracks.)

Highline Henry was a man who rode freight trains a long time ago. That means he was a hobo. He's probably the most famous hobo of all the hobos you've never heard of. Most other hobos have never even heard of him. Henry was born not far from here. In fact, when he was a little boy, he used to lie in his bed and listen to the trains crossing these very same roads, one after another. It got so that he could recognize each train's engineer just by the lay of the horn in the night air. He got so used to the trains that if the sound of a certain horn was different, or later than usual in the night, it would rouse him from his sleep.

And when he was still very young — about five years old — he would often venture out from his house in the deep, dark, cold night and make his way through these cornstalks, on these hills, to catch just a glimpse of the trains rushing through the dark. Most of the time he arrived too late. But one night, around this time of year, he arrived at the tracks just as the rumble of the wheels did. When he felt the sudden rush of air and saw the bright orange sparks of the steel wheels against the rails as the train passed, he knew he had to see where all those trains were going.

And so, when he was just a little older and a little bigger, he left his home for the last time and walked down to the tracks and became a hobo.

For many years, he traveled with the trains all around the country.

He did some good things. He did some bad things. He wasn't a perfect hobo. But of course there are as many perfect hobos as there are perfect people in the world.

Henry rode every single yard of steel that was ever laid down in the United States, and some yards that never were. He rode, and rode, and rode. He saw everything he ever thought he wanted to see. He did everything he ever thought he wanted to do. He learned everything he ever thought he needed to know. But still, he hadn't seen everything. Or done everything. Or learned everything.

He traveled his whole life, slowly turning over the years. Until one day, when he was very old, he found himself sitting by a fire just like this one. And because fires make most men quiet, and still, and thoughtful, he grew very quiet, and very still. And as the October mist came over the hills where he was, he remembered the fields near the house where he grew up so many years before. He remembered nights like this, and being a little boy who still had a home. He thought about his mother and his father. His brothers and his sisters, and his friends. He hadn't seen them in a long, long time. He never thought about what it must have been like for them to watch him disappear the way that he did, into that cold night so many years long ago. And the more he sat, and the more he listened to the fire crackle and pop, and the longer he thought, the sadder he became. For so long, he'd thought only about himself — the places he wanted to see, the things he wanted to do, the things he wanted to leave behind. But now, he knew more than anything else that he wanted to go home.

And so, just like that, the way these things usually are, he was up on his feet. He ran toward the tracks so fast that he nearly left behind his pack. Stumbling back to the fire, he quickly gathered up his few things, and trotted to the siding where he knew a westbound train would soon be stopping.

And soon it was, although little did he know that he wouldn't be alone on that train ride home.

After the train came to a stop, he picked out his car and hopped on. Soon, when his eyes got used to the dark - and before he could change his mind and jump back off - he noticed another hobo sharing his ride, shivering in the corner.

"I'm so cold," the hobo told Henry, through chattering teeth.

But Henry was warm, in his long, thick coat and his flannel shirts.

He thought for a long moment. And then thought some more. And then thought just a little bit more, before finally speaking up. "I'm just going home," Henry said. "No further. And I'll have no further need for this." And with that, he took off his coat, and tossed it to his shivering companion.

The night rolled on with few words passed between the two travelers, and before long the train came to a stop. "Bless you," the once-cold hobo told Henry as he hopped off the train, Henry's coat still on his back. "When we see each other again, we surely won't be strangers."

"We will not," Henry said, smiling a little, and shivering a little too.

As the train again got underway, the wheels slipping and sparking beneath the engine, another hobo quickly scrambled onto Henry's car.

Henry was shocked. "How are you, friend?" he asked, startled.

"Good. Good and warm," the man replied loudly, patting his shoulders. "But I'm hungry. So hungry. And I have so many more miles to put beneath me. Where are you heading, and how are you?"

Henry thought for a long moment. "I'm only going home," he answered, thoughtfully. And at the same time, he remembered that he had bread in his pockets. "I'll be home sooner than later," he said. "This is yours if you want it." He tossed the pieces of bread to the hungry hobo.

The food made Henry's companion glad, and he and Henry talked for a long time about the places they'd been and the things they'd seen, as hobos will do when they're in talkative moods. But soon, the cold pressed in between the spaces in the car, and made Henry shiver. The air between the two men went silent. The freight car rollicked as though it was a ship battered in a Great Lakes storm. Hours passed before the train finally stopped again.

"Bless you," the once-hungry hobo said as he scrambled off of the car into the night, his belly full of Henry's food. "When we see each other again," he said, tossing the last of Henry's bread into his mouth, "we surely won't be strangers."

"No," Henry said, managing a smile. "We will not."

And yet again, just as the slack action rocketed down the line to Henry's car, and the train began to move, another hobo hopped on board his ride.

"Mind if I share a seat?" the man asked Henry.

"Not at all," Henry replied, a little weary, and - if he would admit it - a little scared. The night felt old, and was full of strangers. "How goes it?"

The hobo regarded Henry for a long bit.

"I'm warm, and well-fed," he replied. "That's not so bad. But I have to tell you I'm thirsty. It seems like I emptied the last of my water more than half a lifetime ago." The man lifted his hand to his lips as he said this, as if to verify he was as parched as he thought he was. "But where do you think you're heading tonight?"

Henry was quiet for a moment. He was thirsty too. He was just thinking about how thirsty he was. And still cold. And getting a little hungry now, too.

"I'm just going home," he heard himself say. "And I'll be home soon." His hand reached down in the darkness and traced the handle of his water jug. "But ..."

The stranger cocked his head and watched Henry carefully.

"But I have this little bit of water."

"Home!" This latest hobo repeated loudly, surprising Henry. "Home. Now that is a VERY long time, and a VERY long way from here, isn't it?"

Henry pulled out the jug of water he kept by his side, and passed it to his new-found friend. As he did, he seemed to feel a weight much heavier than that of the water pass from his hand to that of the stranger.

"In some ways yes, in some ways not," he said. 


The hobo nodded, and drank Henry's water eagerly.

At the next stop that night — that night which seemed now to stretch on and on, far longer than any other night Henry could remember — the thirsty hobo left, and yet a new hobo came aboard.

Henry was cold, and hungry, and thirsty, and tired. And he couldn't recall the last time he'd come across so many gentlemen of the road on one of his journeys. But he didn't have much time to ponder these thoughts, as the new hobo asked him many questions. And talked in long sentences.

"How are you, friend?" Henry asked, finally, interrupting the stranger's long stream of words.

"Well," considered Henry's new traveling companion, "I suppose I'm warm, and full of food, and full of water. So pretty good. But I'm lonesome." He paused, and looked all around himself in the murk of the railcar. "I am all alone."

"Well," said Henry, "That is one thing you are not. I am only going home. But I have many tales to tell before I get there, if you'll take the time to hear them."

The lonely hobo nodded, and Henry went on to tell story after story after story. As all his stories unfolded, it was as if his whole life was unpacked and re-told in the light of the passing farmhouses and towns.

After many hours, and much laughter, the train stopped yet again. The lonesome hobo jumped from the train.

"Bless you," he said, turning toward Henry. "You're a good man, Henry. Highline Henry. When we see each other again," and here the man paused for a long time, took off his hat, stepped closer to Henry, and peered deep into his eyes. "We surely will not be strangers."

"Won't we?" Henry heard himself ask. "Won't we?"

And before Henry could realize that he'd never allowed the other hobo his name, the stranger disappeared into the dark.

No more hobos appeared that night.

And there were still many, many miles to go.

The train moved on through the darkness, heading ever West.

Highline Henry grew colder and colder as the miles wore on. 

And he was hungry.

And thirsty.

And lonely.

He began to hate ever taking the name Highline Henry.

He began to hate that he had ever climbed into an open rail car, or had ever hoped to see where the trains went, or even looked at a train or heard the plaintive cry of one of their horns in the dark.

He hated ever wanting to leave home.

The hours of the night, and the endless sky, and the miles and miles of road stretched ever out before him.

The moonlight was weird and yellow and old. The world was rust and splinter.

Henry lay in the corner of his grain car.

"I'm so cold," he said, out loud, to no one. "So hungry. Thirsty. And alone."

Henry didn't realize, until it was too late, that he'd caught the last leg of a hotshot heading West that had no intention of stopping.

Still, somehow, he drifted off to sleep.

When a remarkable thing happened.

The stars had watched Henry all that long night. They knew that all Henry wanted, more than anything, was to go back home. But the stars also knew that there was no home for Henry to go back to. Not on this earth. In all those long years of his selfish wandering, his mother and father had long ago died and gone to heaven, and his brothers and sisters too. That he had long ago willfully squandered every good hand he'd been dealt. But they had also seen his humble heart: The heart that was sorry for each selfish thing he'd ever done, and knew the depth of the debt he could never hope to repay.

The stars knew something else.

They knew that Henry wasn't riding just any ordinary freight train.And that those hobos he'd met along the way weren't strangers.

Henry awoke. Still, it was night. Still, he was on his hotshot heading West. There, in front of him, stood yet another hobo. How could this be? Had he somehow slept through a crew change? The man standing in front of him was tall, and seemed to glow with a light that gathered all lesser lights to it. His face was familiar to Henry. It became more familiar still as he spoke.

"Hello Henry," the man said.

"Hello, friend," Henry stammered, scared and yet not scared at the same time.

The man smiled, and some of the night's sharp silver seemed to glow suddenly gold.

"Yes. Friend. Friend indeed."

Henry thought it necessary to stand, but the tumult of the rails beneath the car kept him on his knees.

"Where are you going on such a cold, long night, Henry?" asked the man, who knew Henry.

Henry thought for a moment. And the truth of that moment rushed in upon him all at once. It caught the wind out of his lungs. It made him sad, and angry, and scared, and hopeful, and ashamed. And he answered. "I was going home." 

"Home?" the tall man asked, squinting.

"I ... I was," Henry said. "But I know the truth. I know that home is just a word for a place I left behind for good a long time ago. A word for a place that isn't there. A word for a place I don't deserve." 

The tall man nodded, slowly, lifting a hand to his stubbled face.

"But you're heading home anyway, aren't you Henry?" he asked.

Highline Henry's heart lifted a little.

"Yes sir."

The tall man laughed.

"Yes you are," he said. "And I'll catch up with you later. But I have other routes to attend to this night. That is, if you're satisfied with the one you find yourself on?"

Henry grinned. "Well, of course. Yes!"

"Good!"

The tall man stepped out onto the porch of Henry's grainer.

"You have just a few more miles to go, Henry. But I can tell you're cold. Hungry. Thirsty. I have no need of these things. Do you?"

And Henry recognized instantly his coat on the tall man's back. His pockets brimming with Henry's bread. Henry's water jug swinging by the tall man's side.

"No," Henry said, without hesitation. "No."

The tall man turned to Henry, grinning.

"So glad we're not strangers, Henry. See you at home."

***

Three hobos huddle around a jungle fire somewhere not far from here. The conversation has gone quiet. The fire is low and the coffee is cold.

All three of them lean back in the night, staring at the stars.

Suddenly, a shooting star stretches across the sky, arching brightly from east to west.

"Highline Henry on his hotshot," whispers one.

"Heading home," says another. "If you believe such things."

"I do," the tall man says.

October

What you could not help
is a long list
that rain spells
against safety glass
near shores of inland seas
ripe with engines
idled over whiskey-proof nights.

You threw chains
over them
and wondered at what home
might await you at the end.

What good was that?

Strangers
crouching
under weeping
leaves;

ballet
of switch-throws

and horizons
low as
your great-grandfather's
deathbed.

What good?

The space between
the curtain
and the floor;

The storm-flattened
cornstalks.

The totems
that the blade drags with it
over whiskers.

To the Stranger

Shards of ice, boot-made
on the stream,
for years
outside the library
or failing kitchen window,
or beneath
fuel-oiled trestle-works,
or in my youth
of loved cousins,
near harvest,
or along the freshwater
shores of
inland seas,
or in the forests
grown over boundary lines.

I never knew
and never saw
the feet that
marked the places
wherein
I was overthrown.

To that stranger,
I say
that I once
watched my tears
freeze upon
the soles of my own boots.

For that
you may one day pay
with shards of ice
boot-made on the stream.

marquette (part two)

Gold autumn heaven
tilts with all those streets

one shoulder lowered
up under

orange lights
strung porch-to-porch,

plane of the River
gone slack
among the maples
and idled ways back home.

Hotshots treetops combines
moving under hollow-ground blades
of moonlight

spared as you,

your father's son,
sons' father,

needle spun
on
compasses
dropped face-down

in fields lain over iron
tended,
untended.

Dread

I never saw the face of
That black dread,
nameless,
dervishing the leaves,
colliding
blind-eyed
along the fencelines
and orange light
of barge-cabin
on the river.

It breathed
and walked the River Road,
and the breath of it
came along with me
to canyons
rusted shut as
autumn trees
against the moon,
the dark
soaking through the stars
above.

excerpt

"I fear no thing that invites fear. I stagger past uncashed checks and press my hands against the backs of the Winnipeg strangers God puts in my way, and I arise, palms pressed against the glass of that so-cold night. It's so weird, the number of loose, un-collared dogs left trotting up and down the streets here; the absence of black people;  the strong wind and the way the tree branches don’t bend or move within it."

Remembering

And the thin fires,
Night skies flickering by
With years burred to them.

Those silhouettes of boughs
Stay on the hillside.

I remember
Mountains
Of pumpkin-orange coals;

Dime of a moon;

Frost gilding deer paths.

I can name
Each needed thing my hands have ever dropped.

They swing
From branches
Of silver-lit trees.