This next poem is called "The Fort."
I had this great time at the Tucson High School
the other day, and I was--
I said, really, well, ignorantly now,
you know, well, I guess you can't make a fort around here.
And these guys-- anybody, any of you guys here?
These guys said-- there you go-- yes, you can.
Was it you?
The hole?
Right, there you go.
He said-- you should do it--
I said, how do you make a fort here?
And they go, you dig a hole, and then, they said you dig a hole,
and you put planks over the top, right?
Are you the guy who's there six days or something?
There's somebody though, right?
Wasn't it several days?
That's interesting-- a hole in the ground for a fort,
don't you think, gender-wise?
[LAUGHTER]
Anyway, this is kind of a reverse hole, this one.
This is called "The Fort."
This is my brother Tommy again.
"It was a kind of igloo made from branches and weeds, a dome,
with an above ground tunnel entrance the boys crawled
through on their knees, and a campfire in the center
because smoke came out of a hole in the roof,
and we couldn't go there.
I don't even remember trying, not inside, although I remember
a deal we didn't keep--
so many Dr. Peppers, which nobody drank,
and my brother standing outside it like a chief,
bare chested, weary from labor, proud,
dignified, and talking to us as if we could never understand
a thing he said because he had made this thing and we had not,
true knowledge and disdain when he looked at us.
For those weeks, the boys didn't chase us.
They busied themselves with patching the fort
and sweeping the dirt outside the entrance--
a village of boys who had a house to clean,
women and magazines, cigarettes and soda,
and the strange self-contained voices
they used to speak to each other with.
And we approached the clearing, where
their fort was, like deer in winter,
hungry for any small thing.
What they had made without us--
we wanted to watch them live there."