sw00347fdl-entry9of9

Fond du Lac



Fourteen
-

         Whoever you are, bronze man
on a bronze horse (statue beyond Scott),
I do not care.  Behind you salvia spark,
cannas blaze; and cushions of chrysanthemums . . .
just leaves.  City, city.  Here, along
the boulevard's vertebrae: evergreen
to evergreen to Lakeside Park, I feel
beginnings mixed with ends; relief, and none.
The Red Owl supermarket.  Fond du Lac's
infamous Outdoor.  Fade it.  Some say
there's a law of entropy too.  What are we:
puddles of peristent darkness, toads?


Fifteen
-

                                                     I
can't--that engine!: old, retired, and on display--
make out its--.  There!: Soo Line 613.
And the red kiddie train, whistling; the swings--
my pumping heart--metronoming; shouts, laughter;
the teeter-totters, gymnast arms; cheered sky!


Sixteen
-

From this island of pfitzer junipers
and arborvitae/ where a car may loop
to "cruise the gut" again; ease through the park
to the "big hole" harbor, the beacon point;
or fishtail toward Lakeside to be, Main Street
divides.
            Touching/ a blue-gray cone, I pass
to the left; cover/ the fronts of my shoes
with a beige film, popping a stone at a pole.
Toward the south, smoke (where the sun spreads) begins
to lemon and pinken; a near tree crackles;
the planet burns.  What good am I?  That mouse,
for instance, jittering into the weeds,
it--!  Damn.  The gravel shadows to ash,
the breeze shifts, and the wealth of Stinky Point /
and a bridge longed for, dreams in the air, ghost /
greet me.  Confusion, ten thousand dead carp
of aeration, you have stifled me well.
On the lake-edge rocks, a couple fish, kiss;
near them, grade school boys.  So it is: we come,
wiggle haphazardly, go.  Even if--
leaping at the neck of a goldenrod,
a bee warms its hind legs with yellow muffs,
then journeys south.  All I need to do is
step through those reeds.  Between the elders there--
what's that?  An early nighthawk!  Strange cry.
The water cannot be too deep out there:
no deeper than he glides now, over it--
two-and-a half men tall; yet deep enough
to die in.  But I?  Each shown argument
can be destroyed, disturbed, and all the buds
of chrysanthemums, seas.  Weeds.  Weeds, if I
rub you wrongly, you will cut.  Still, I could
tear you from your lives.  But why?  Because you
will never bloom the ways I want you to?
From the river's shore, two black guys, slim, young. . . .
Behind me, weeds, moves a city, ofwhich
I am a part: baffled, weak, but a part;
and my reachings too--nighthawk in the twigs.
Blade of quack, ragweed: the grasps of this seedling
elm may exceed yours by miles, but no choices,
no uncertainties.  Alchemists of slime,
should I demand this weed do this tree's work?
avaunt? crow like a rooster?  Dirty mouth,
Fond du Lac River.  Bullheads!  Haven't I
fallen?  Do your think your shallowness better
than mine?  City.  What time, what time is it,
city?  Bury your minds, ripples of weeds,
jazz.  Was I to know?  Tell me, tiger-bee,
was I?  . . .  Wah! git! git away!  --  God!  /  Whirred
world, will we never stop screeching, never live?






[ 2 publication notes: 
   -
   A portion of Fond du Lac, here sections "Eight" and "Nine"
   and the first 21 lines of section "Ten", was originally published 
   in the Wisconsin Review.  
   -
   Section "Two" and most of what is now section "Seven"
   along with several other passages 
   were presented in Steve Trott's 
   "Poet captures taste of Fond du Lac in his work"/
   published in The Reporter, Monday, April 27, 1981. ]





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00346fdl-entry8of9

Fond du Lac



Twelve
-

Johnson Street.  How easy it would be
to forget this jangled age, this Age of Crises;
but will Main evaporate for that?
Surrounded by bushes and evergreens,
the Zacherl Funeral Home whispers, waits.
No need to go past there.  I'll cross Marquette
right here, return to Main, and bear it out:
even to/ Stinky Point.  Besides, I'm getting
hungry.  The Super Valu sign dances,
Borden's dances.  Flickers on, the light goes
green.  Racing/ left of a kid scooting a wagon,
my left arm raises; my belt ticks a post.
Planing around the bumper of a car
leaving the Conoco station, I notice
the corner is clear, the light yellow, then red;
I turn.  "Aaaaaaannnt."  A blue hood jolts at the edge
of my eye; shocks me across Johnson, breathing
beyond the nails of--any moment--death.
Puffing, damp, I rest.


Thirteen
-

                                  Firehouse No. 3:
and Purgatory, Greta, nothing and all,
rush; become my thoughts, snail exploring
the underside.
                       A 'hound: to Chi--; used cars,
washed: Gormican's; the Lighthouse Restaurant.
Never have eaten at this place.  Today,
though, just for fun--.  "What would you like?"  "I guess
I'll have the haddock plate."  "Say pal," a fellow 
in his thirties slaps, "you must be Catholic."
"Yes."  ". . . loading, bus to: Oshkosh, Neenah, Menasha,
Apple--"  "My name's Bob.  I've been hoping some
Catholic would sit next to me.  You see,
I've got this friend: he thinks religion's bosh.
You understand.  He tells me logic's stuck
in atoms, and that this human existence
is a, a closed system (some kind of number
set).  Get it?  He says nothing exists but
what we can see: nothing spiritual, pal,
exists!  Says logic proves it--he and his
educated friends."  "Coffee, sir?"  "Well now,
what do you say to that?"  "No thanks."  "What, pal?"
"I was just answering the waitress."  "Huh?
Haven't you been listening, pal?"  "I think--
I can't get into that now."  "Kinda sticks
in your throat, does it?  Well, my Catholic pal,
looks like we're sunk.  Helen,  another cup
of coffee.  Think there is an answer?"  "Yes."
"But you don't know it.  I thought Catholics knew
all the answers."  "Some might."  "Some might, pal?  Who?"
"I don't know."  "What's wrong?  Does the fish taste bad?"
"It's all right, I guess,"  "What's on your mind, then?"
"Horse kicks."  "Look, pal, if you've got a headache--"
"No; you wouldn't understand."  "Where you going?"
"Out.  Here, you can pay for my fish."
                                                     So man's
reduced to his chemistry, John; yet you look on
in awe at individuals because of it;
and for all your lack of belief, say you
respect man more, perhaps, than I.  It may
well be you do.  Still, "the still point of the turning
world", the fight against the wastelands, against
bland, personal ambiguity, against
unsympathetic proselytizing; yes,
even against accepting all.  To be firm,
yet tolerant.  That.  How?  And even so,'
that's not enough.  Fragile leviathan.
O Greta, I may never touch your ears
again.  






 Fond du Lac: page 9
 -


Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00345fdl-entry7of9

Fond du Lac



Eleven
-

                       Slicing between the Citgo
islands, I slip to Merrill.  The waves shrink;
the present rolls behind.  Happier, I walk
from its bright noise, and lazing through an elm
about one hundred feet away, daydream
of orioles, sparrows.  The weathered fence
of the car lot to my right seems moth dust
on my fingertips.
                         On the bridge at First,
things as they are?  By force, by fear, the sea;
by chance, the air.
                            Here, spirit--that man coming!
Who is?--I--I know him!  Yes!  Oil-rich
McNaughton.  Probably going to the bank.
But he's walking!  "Hi, O. L., where you going?"
"Church."  Judge not.  "What about you?  Coming in?"
"I guess."  Chrysanthemum sea, windy flower,
we cannot tell our closest fellow men:
we cannot tell the stars.  What can we tell?
One-fourth of us wills evil, half of us
thinks evil's holied when used to obtain
what it supposes good, one-fourth of us
seeks good through good; yet even these last rip
each other's hulls.  What is this air we breathe?!
this slender shade?!  Is logic locked in stones,
and faith alone, beyond all seeming reason?
We take this stale, volcanic century,
embrace it; love.  For what?!  Christ!?  Cross!?  We are
impossible.
                 Standing, where Merrill/ stems
Marquette: projecting beyond my eyes--the tumbling
of Main, the curve of Macy: standing, fused,
uncertain, I see my mother (softer than
a distant kite) preparing dinner, knowing
I won't be home, but worrying the same.
Or what's a mother for?
                                  That noon the ball/
went skimming over/ the fence, and spattered glass
at a butter plate, giving a couple wonder,
I was shook to envy, laughter, fear/ no sharper
than now: with O. L. in my thoughts again,
and Fond du Lac.
                          Sounds, like someone mowing!
There!  In his fifties, I'd say.  But that poppy
paisley!  He must be liberal; even so,
he slices weeds to equal heights, and we
suspect they're civilized and/ call them grass.
I suppose/ I should be at home myself,
pruning our double lot; but then, I wouldn't
be here if I cared that much about outer things.
If I cared at all, some would rub.  So what.
Does everything have to be seen, to seem
at a glance it's getting this world somewhere,
to be practical like my uncle Ben
to be worthwhile?  So we can't tell a man
by his cards, his clothes; a daisy from a cosmos;
a peach from a sun: but if similarities
conceal differences . . . all cards are jokers!
And if everything's relative . . . the grounds
for it?!  Playgrounds, neighborly fresh-mown grounds,
undergrounds?  I cannot begin to play
or cut unless I assume some absolute.
There must be grounds from which to start, or what's
this living all about?  Grandmother used
to bake gingerbread men.  If a man's junk--
atoms without meaning--why does he care,
argue: to soften the absurd?  Absurd
it is to have absurd grounds.  But what then?
Roses?  And yet, how do we get together
when one man's right is another man's wrong?
Perhaps the confines of this rock do cause
us to become schizoid (imperfect as
we are) though water flowed from a rock, a church
was built on a rock; "Choruses from 'The Rock'".
It's enough to drive a man out of his bird:
all this crazy walking around.  Of course,
I meant to challenge myself, shake the haze
from my will; face this/ century for once.  Still,
if we could be one . . . if doubts were dispelled. . . .   







 Fond du Lac: page 8
 -


Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00344fdl-entry6of9

Fond du Lac



Nine
-

                                                 Snickering off,
I pass George Webb's almost preconsciously
while biting into a piece of log cabin.
The temperature stretches itself yet
along the pebbles of my perspiration.
In Geyber's: pearls and diamonds.  Greta, Greta,
not till now, one thought of you.  Buenos Aires
shivers.  A Germ--.  Christ, help us; there's no
returning.  The bus depot's arch reminds 
me that the buses meet now farther north;
that the blind woman passing me perceives,
perhaps, as well as I.  Shall each minute
experience, Greta (girl too easy to love),
progress a man toward tunnel vision, give
him surer proof of his infinity?
Will this slim lady's purple hat/ become
an nth example, then, to dogmatize
some prejudice?  What matters it.


Ten
-

                                                 O crammed
profusion!  City?  Puke.  I yawp and gawk,
read that "The Fortune Cookie" will click
at/ the theatre before me; inhale
the warmth of marigold popcorn some kids
are buying in the carmel shop next door;
image the night a friend/ pissed on a walk--
there was no wind.  And who is strong enough
to care.  A barber pole.  This headline squawks:
"Sharp VC attack"--why not.  I squint
at men and words that/ advocate a Faith/
I do not understand.  Here is a bar,
there is another jewelry store, and there's
a novelty shop.  Things as they are.  But what?
what can we say we know, we feel, believe?
The Arcade: bowling.  So the skulls have rolled,
the hard, black balls of human power and skill;
so Main Street flicks, a space of free electrons,
vomit, song.  Pressing against the gases, flesh
and cloth seem dying blades of algae, caught
in a thick brook, disparate, desperate.
I wave at a brown convertible, friends of mine.
The driver honks.  Shouts and whistles disturb
his radio into the semi trembling
the parked car beside me; across this shoal
I oscillate through, in the bone-tight weeds
of a storefront display, a plastic car--
aPlymouth by Revell--interests me,
bends my nose to a pane again.  Above
an HO switcher, and three rubber perch,
a scum-green monster doll: who thinks to scare
me in--I would suppose--to save that engine
or/ to delight my younger sister's coming
birthday: presides.  But I am not impressed.
Outside the Arcade, three boys and a girl
chatter through smoke:  "--what she did to o' Lou,
I'd never want to--"  "Remember Chris?
Well, she's finally getting a divorce!"
"From Sambo?!"  "Yeh."  "You know, I always thought
that guy--"  Pulling the wooden, heavy door
open, I move up the stairs.  Pins are falling.
I listen for the strikes.  A housewives' league.
On alley nine a woman like a plum
hops to the line.  Her black and blue ball bumps,
rolls two-thirds of the lane/ quite straight, then hooks
to the left, tipping only the seven pin.
On alley six a slimmer gal lightly glides
to the line, letting her ball, barely heard,
go swiftly down the lane.  The pins all jump/
into the pit.  Her teammates cheer, applaud.
Another tray of beer goes out to ten.
Some of the wives are packing.  My thumb sticks
in a thumbhole.  I pluck it out, and head
back down the stairs just as a green balloon
and a laughing girl appear beside those four
I overheard when--"But Linn, what makes 
you so positive Chris will keep her kids?"
"I know her, numby.  She will."  "Okay, she will."
"Look, Rudy, Chris and I were buds. . . ."  The green
balloon floats back, and a passing nun's smile,
dipping into the little girl, pleases her.
As they round the bandying group, they arouse
in me St. Mary's and how nervously I wade
along Main.  Sand jets from the gutter, turns
and jabs at me.  My left eye itches, sinks;
flounders back up. 








 Fond du Lac: page 7
 -



Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00343fdl-entry5of9

Fond du Lac



Six
-

                           Wallace S.,
among the rushes, Moses me a bit.
Do not let this desert parch.  Pray for manna,
rain; oasis me.  Strengthen the veins
of Fond du Lac, Riplean ghost (preserved
by a chance operation--at the first;
a brilliant and eccentric K.--now),
at its high, budding point.  By 1960
this town was to die, believe it or not;
and would have, too, had it not lost some fat
before that predicted death date.  Yet even
then we needed our stubborn Merc man,
Kiekhaefer, to force our sapling council
into bud, to get it to/ spread our roots--
a task not all that easy.  But the roots spread,
and the tight buds.  Stevens, go.  I conjure
you strangely, but want myself.


Seven
-

                                              Hotel,
restaurant, furniture store, bar: the hub
of my chrysanthemum, isle of--Sargasso,
Sargasso.  Fond du Lac, however sight
would have you: here, where comfort and drink, food
and shelter ridge their shades, odors, I could stand
for hours watching Division and Main crossed,
holding your sepals, your quarters together;
keeping your quarters, your sepals distinct.
Notheast: Maple, Taft, the Lighthouse, Marquette
and Scott, and Winnebago Drive; the staid,
persistent wealth of artesian wells;
ledges, lagoons, Paul Bunyan's lake--puddle
of/ stinky waters, flash storms; Roosevelt Park:
whatever there men may ponder from under
your burnt-out roof, Retlaw Hotel.  Dim bar,
Carry to me, behind your cracking door
a woman, man, might sip and chat the whole
Northwest: our Giddings & Lewis; rail yards,
the Supple Marsh--where ice was once chunked out,
and Seymour, Johnson, Hickory; the halls,
motels, and lake shore homes; the pine, the deer.
In your soft chairs, Kramer's: Mercury Motors
and Madison and Military Road;
Grove, Western, Pioneer: the whole Southwest
a plush man could ease to mind.  Restaurant,
birth-and-death place for the vaired Southeast,
from your delicious booths a man could raid:
Vine, Highway Forty-One; the private course,
the cemetaries; Eden.  What other cross
could one so dream this town from, learn through its
fragile queens and pastel crimes, curse its stench,
exalt its soil, feel how/ the near waves flower.


Eight
-

So, Fond du Lac, your center spins a world
in the half-light of this knifed hour: let be:
your ocean's filled with aphids, paradox.
A drop of salt arching from some whitecap
burns to a crystal, dives, dissolves.  A drop
of salt: a small boy spurting from group
to group.  Weaving a double crossing, I
approach the Retlaw, lean between two bikes
heading south, and drift to the right.  Inside,
my steps are softer.  Briskly looking around,
I spot, walk over to/ a water fountain,
catching the sea I bubble up.  Bellboys stopped
before the elevator, yellow mums,
or are the asters, bud and break
from their shoulders.  Bloomings unfold us.  But, here,
much seems unwanted.  Still, the doorman only
glances, and the clerk lets me browse.  They know
their needle of unconcern will work me out
in time; that silence is the better word
to use, those easy coins.  A Cadillac--
red!--arrives.  Straining to follow it, I
accidentally nick the doorman's heel,
etching out.  He stares slant at me, then sets
a smile for the Cad guests.






 Fond du Lac: page 6
 -



Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00342fdl-entry4of9

Fond du Lac



Four
-

                 "Excuse, me, ma'am."  A blur
of daisies dangling a shoe box, she sways,
rubs past.  I screw my neck to compass her,
then loosen it.  A knotted backbone gobbing
tobacco onto the curb/ gags me.
I shop the neat display of oxfords, boots
and varia in Fondy's Big Shoe Store.
Diamond, spade, heart, club: brightly placed
in a white parallelogram of leather
whose length dimension cuts across the ankle
of a black Cuban style shoe.  ["Who is set?"
"Gambler?"  "Yes."  "Step in: I'm leaving.  Your bluffs
are just as good as mine."  "Italian style?"
"No!  What do you think we're playing?  This game's
poker!  Now place your bet or get on out."
"Yah man, gotta have wild feet for this one.
Gotta know each man's bare blood, light and dark.
Experience that, and this land of other rooms
is yours.  Ain't no sour daydreams here."]  That shining,
off-set laced, pointed oxford makes me wince;
want wrangling corpuscles, guys wise and sluffy
to be my dangerous friends, horns in shoes.
["Raise four."]  Fingertips press my collarbone.
In the pane below my neck a silver buckle,
a pin-stripped shirt--that face behind my face--
"Ray!  How you been?!"  Twisting to shake his hand,
my lungs relax.  "Well, what's the matter, Art,
am I a ghost or something?"  "No, you just
surprised me."  "What you looking at?  Those things
are for kids!  You couldn't be wanting them!?"
"Why not, I'm still teen-agey enough."  "You what?!"
"No, really!  If I had the money--."  "Well, here,
take some of mine.  Sure'd hate to see you/ melt
through this glass."  "Don't worry."  "You think I am!
It's your kick, Art.  Don't lose your nose."  Nice guy.


Five
-

Torn bags; the sidewalk again, with its shells,
weeds, memories pinched, tinted red, or rolling
perhaps, or else / cracks in the stone, the--hornet
of my brain.  Meters.  What is it with faces,
licorice to buttermilk; rainbows slung
around bodies of air?  Places to park,
to tease a fender.  Lampposts.  Banners.  Cans
to/ keep our city.  Hydrants.  Boxed-in phones.
Meeters.  What is it about blood that swirls,
squeezes/ industrial legs/arms, crowds a mouth,
a thousand mouths; whistles that swing, explode,
to blind an eye?  Today is Friday.  Here
doors/ will beat till nine: Buehler's, Sears, Ford's--. 
I think I'll get a little bag of logs
to chew on.  No, no, not tobacco, candy.
(I would have to phrase it that way.)  Let's see.
"Candy is dandy" of course, but a good liquor
tilting the arches would be a real sweet
limbo/ to warm a Friday night.  But then,
vagrant sea, ripples, no.  Let others think
another naked son's no special thing,
raise their mugs; chug their white wetnesses into
their earths, rich, poor.  You know, I like her smile.
"A quater pound of these log cabins, please."
"Anything else?"  "No."  "That's twenty-one cents."
"I have the penny."  "Thank you."  Magazines.
McCall's.  Here's a Sports Illustrated!  Na.
Why should I piddle around messing up 
mags I won't buy anyhow.  That looks--Thesz!
The old man's quite a tendril.  I wonder.  No!
"So long, Duffy."  Ought to applaud myself
for that one.  Bet I usually spend ten
full minutes here, at least, listing at pipes,
paperbacks, whatnot.  Wait!  Orange flames?  Negro.
"Arson and street war--most destructive riot
in U. S. history   11 pages
in color"  City of the angels.  Life.
Through weeds between two tires: a T-shirt stretched
on a dark brown body--capable and young,
a pair of black pants, and eyes straight ahead
that see and do not see, walk.  Behind him
the world burns, splits and splits.  The saucer men
are coming.  And I eat toothaches for kicks.
Things couldn't be better.







 Fond du Lac: page 5
 -



Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00341fdl-entry3of9

Fond du Lac



Three
-

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
 -



Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00340fdl-entry2of9

Fond du Lac



One
-

Ring the bridge rail!  Open wide, blood, bones,
will!  Your concerns are with the now--what is;
its meaning; not with what you want it to seem!
If rivers scrub low through arrowhead/ mud,
nudging twigs at their minnows, soaking butts,
chugging sludge/ chemical refuse, flashing white
bass/ swallows/ skies, submit, tampering heart:
Look: here a hurtling bag, a sliding box,
becomes at times a pigeon, or a dog;
but today the air swings hammock-like,
does not deceive, while pigeons wrinkle down
from riding over Fond du Lac, and scuffle
to their nests under the storage bins' roof,
black from the dust of anthracite; today
mongrels mix, tumble their beige and umber
coats into the garden of oily weeds
by the Milwaukee Road industrial track,
somersault yelps to the river's edge,
stop, ruggedly scurry, chase up the bank,
shiver, and hurrying off for the bridge
at Forest, run my sight.  
                                 Those several boys
arguing there--beyond them beads of cars
jerk, slip their ways--wonder if I know
any of those guys?  The puniest kid
seems--ya!  Split.  Split!  Look at him come, whipping
around the guard rail (kick at the mutts), pegged
tan pants, brown curly hair, an aqua shirt--
faded--its sleeves cut off & its tails popping,
black Cuban heels quivering, pointing back!
No, I guess I don't know them.  The two
who started out after him, out on the bridge
again with their leader, rough-up the kid
they have held.  Swallows skitter, people pass;
and the three toughs, like a giant ant, drag
their prey down somewhere, unbothered.  This one,
bewildered, turns, races up to the walk
and slows, glaring at me as if I were 
an evasive punching bag; then skirts on by.
What I fantasize he schemes intrigues me
almost enough to follow him.  I might
enjoy--however, my thoughts--Lakeside Park
is greener, riper.


Two
-

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hailstones, cobblestones--
in that swayback third of a block from Macy
to this Mayville spur, I remember both,
lodging a score of tires in ice; uneven
and bowled, forcing the newsboys' bikes through slush,
skating their wheels, hammering papers loose.
Hail again?  Perhaps.  But the street's smooth now;
slowly, erratically, ruddy bricks
descend from the Reporter Building's frame,
scabiosa turning chrysanthemum,
while across First the Post Office sorts, feels
the thoughts of thousands.  In several years,
what it will be, I do not know.  Bright cars,
dented cars, young girls skipping, men with canes,
horns, yells, a lady reaching--kneeling down--
for a dropped dime, three businessmen converging,
two six-foot boys with a mail cart; a friend 
I won't hello because I can't remember
her name--the courthouse clock is wrong again.






 Fond du Lac: page 3
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Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00339fdl-entry1of9

[ The poem being introduced here is a lyric narrative centered
   around a persona walking through a part of his hometown at the
   time of the 1960's Los Angeles riots.  Originally written in
   1966/67 while I was attending the Writers' Workshop in Iowa City,
   it owes its existence to an intuitive challenge from my mentor. ]  
   -
   [ insert from May 10, 2003 ]
   During my first year at Iowa, I had written a number of short poems;
   but had been devoting myself to fashioning a fantasy epic in stanzas
   of nine lines rhyming aababcbcc, a nasty scheme I then thought I had
   invented; and even to this day I have not done the research I would
   need to do to be sure.  So, if I want, I can go on thinking of it as the
   "Salchertian Stanza"; but it will only be more proof of the foolishness
   in my ego.  Blessedly, my mentor, George Starbuck, seeing what was
   in me and what was not, said I should write from something I was
   more familiar with; and so by the prongs of his pitchfork/ enabled me
   to make the primal leaps of a literary/mind-cracking journey I am yet
   on, and expect to persist on, no matter the opinions of others [thank
   you, Pushkin] who happen to encounter--here & there--a sentence
   or more I have written, or a simple sketch.




Fond du Lac


          The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
          Is the wisdom of humility:
                        from East Coker by T. S. Eliot

Prologue

Believing/ as might wings/  Earth ferries deaths
my essence should not tolerate, I've tried
to lose its factories, its predators
under the shadows of my flight; to drift
among hills in ages gentler than mine.
Rebellion: over beauty, over truth;
Idea: over the badinaged smile
in the empty bottle.  Rather than attempt
to find and crush one berry for those mouths
hidden in the small caves of tunnels, cans,
I have hid my own.  There were summer days
I moved, a neurotic rook, turning
left, right,left at each new corner, entranced
toward a Circle, to see this planet dim;
to dream.  And there was a night, cooled with mist,
when shoes were mostly home, I hung near a pool
in Taylor Park to--"Only the Lonely"--hum,
wanting, off from the square pavilion there
(shelter for the custodians of cards,
the cutthroat Sheepshead house), to harmonize
me/you/and that: October-loaded world.
But having to choose, ignorant of . . . sullens;
my eyes itch, ache; their eyelids give to sleep.






 Fond du Lac: page 2
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Brian A. J. Salchert