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Fond du Lac



Three
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Main Street: old battleground of needs and wants;
watery eyes; of neon bullets, fingers;
sales, investments; leases: our meeting place
of years.  Who swimming here, though well, can hook
each piece to each, reveal the puzzle's order
fashioned from parts so much alike, unlike:
eshausts from trucks and buses, cinder dust,
sirens, hearts, children, air-conditioned stores,
broken mouths smearing an alley stair, smiles,
the dance of/ indecision?  All I see
goes down and up, out and in, round and round,
until summer, it seems, is/ because things
exist, persist, at all.
                              Looking through such
knots of motion, a man might spit, prefer
some woods to be hunted/ and bows of rain,
though he's among those who also desire
human touch.
                     Main Street: at that down hour
of two/ when more than half its lights are pulsing
yellow, the fever in tourists' eyes, the drought
in truckers' arms, a vacuum at the heart.
Buildings appear a nerveless ligature 
then, as if without their cellular crowds,
they were an asteroid's mountain range; or each
a scab.
            The sun has tumbled into roofs
and moved the minds of shoppers toward their homes
and moved the Earth another hour toward death,
warming the dusty stones to ninety-six
at the First Fond du Lac National Bank.
A quiet mother shades her babies deep
in their dark green, nudges a turtle toy;
then releasing the brake, rocks them, and ripples
the way I came, like a word.  Two older women
toddle in front of Penny's shoe department,
uneasy in their pillowed skins.  The sign
reads "walk".  I taste their bobbing breasts, their sweat,
as I meet them.  Kids dash saltily by.
Three bodies' lengths before me/ pigtails squeal;
a pink girl whirls, slaps the arm and cheek
of a tan brown-eyed boy, shrinking in his
Bermuda blue-jeans.  "Why don't you go back
to California?" she snaps.  A friend
of his: (ochre sleeping across his eyes
and clumping down his neck) in Greekish sandals,
a spotted T-shirt, yellow madras shorts:
resting his right hand on the ruffled boy's
left shoulder, coolly says, "This town's tighter
than vacuum seal--ay Whit?"  Whit turns.  "Man,
I wish I had the wrist."
                                  "Hey you, what you
so interestedin?"  Man questions me.
I shake my head and, as if in a daze, edge
away; then, "He's just a bubble of air.
Forget him."
                    City, city: grand, expansive,
seminal, macabre: the floor of a sea
ridged with coral, speckled with/ wisps of fish,
and gardened with anemone, how I
would swim through you, would mix my heart and head
in you, hold you entire; devour your parts,
late summer city, gold chrysanthemum!
Elbow to shoulder, smile to frown, a pound
of Whitman's squished by a tire: how many bones
scrape themselves against your rusting tin, town
of shifting depths? how many reach to cleanse,
to spray the plastic bandage on?  ". . . get drunk.
That'll keep your tubes warm.  Better 'an
jumpin' off a ledge or hangin' yourself."
"Yah?  Better than humpin' a broad?"  Desire,
Mexican fire bush, salvia, beet: none,
I have none here, but One.  Buildings, machines,
people.  If these are what we must explore,
contend with--"Damn it, I tell ya, there is
no God!" / "First niggers, now fags!  Who the hell
wants 'em?"--Main Street, Main Street, how can I not
pray, not rebel?   







 Fond du Lac: page 4
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Brian A. J. Salchert