Here's one for the vets, Vietnam vets.
Bob greases himself up in his garage,
works on his Volkswagen bus.
Away from wife and kids for a while,
smells of oily work table, exhaust oil
as he grunts a valve to millimeter perfection, purrs,
time and screw to coax, and rrr, rrr, mechanics.
Saving money by doing his own work is real.
Helping me with my Volkswagen, he looks up,
oil smudged face, greasy handed, nostrils black and says,
it's real, Jim.
Feel that energy in his engine.
Runs better.
Beats paying a mechanic $100.
And we can do it ourself.
It's real.
The following week, Bob and I go camping.
Confident of his work and proud, he
wants to try Doris as he calls his van up steep mountain
terrain.
My singleness glimmers bright.
My freedom makes the land glow, the sky bluer.
Common asphalt road winding to the foothills
ignites each nerve into a sacred torch.
It's been a long time.
An ex-Vietnam grunt, instead of going back to New York,
Bob became a backpack and stick handed
hill man herding goat flocks in Placitas,
with ram wool beard waist long, roamed gopher
watered arroyos up snake burrowed coyote trails, healing
himself in the shady cedar groves,
and pincushion Yucca patches.
We snuggle in our sleeping bags, look up at stars,
want our lives to be simple, flames of natural gas
from the bowels of Earth.
Be us, plentiful, innocent humans.
From his bag, Bob stares into the dark sky.
Atop Sandia Crest at radio transmission poles
blink red lights of flying mortar.
Second night, set camp.
And at midnight, follow Boulder bottom trail.
Full moon fevers and folds of hills
skid, gravel crust to smooth stream silt gully and follow
roadside stream up.
Suddenly, Bob plunges into the creek side brush.
Splash wading stream.
Belly down crouched near bloated bodies with dead leaf eyes.
Then sloshes up bloody bank amid dying coughs and springs out
of the brush as quickly, sopping wet, shivering,
red faced in a full Cambodian moon.
Old exhilaration of Nam patrols in his blue eyes.
I understood.
And then I showed him the old preacher's rock house,
clothed in centuries wild clover and thorned laurel,
caved-in ceiling vigas charred by livestock rubbings and dung,
herded here during bad winter storms.
I understood.
And on the way back to Burque the next morning,
passed Willard Estancia, towns hollowed by decades
of blowing prairie dust.
I thought, stones here are dream rooms
with answers to my questions.
But I can't stay.
Those I know from various pueblos who have stayed,
their lives are white cloaks my words wear
on freezing nights in the city.
The black hounds of Bob's tires bound us
toward the dark hostile angles of the city panting necessity,
necessity over cattle guards and arroyo dips.
Necessity.
And tear up the delicate blues stems
of hours we spent camping.
And as we enter the city limits, torch my body is dims.
And slowly, an old darkness fills me again."