is to have an old but firmly painted name
and friends. The Blackfoot stops, funereal
and green, and eagles headed north
for sanctuary wait for our applause
to fly them home. At 6 A.M.
the fast train east divides the town,
one half, grocery store and mill,
the other, gin and bitter loss.
Even the famed drunk has begun to fail.
His face, fat yesterday and warm, went
slack thin color, one more eerie morning
off the river, bones of ugly women
in his bed. The timber train at noon
divides the town an hour into dying cars.
By four, all bears in the protective hills
hum the air alive. And should the girl
all drunks recall, the full one filled with sun
return, her teeth intact and after 40 years
her charm preserved in joke, the aging drunks
will claim they cheated death with mash.
Death, the Blackfoot says, but never snow.
To die in Milltown, die at 6 P.M.
The fast train west rattles your bourbon warm.
The latest joke is on the early drunk:
sing one more chorus and the nun you love
will dance here out of habit. To live
stay put. The Blackfoot, any river
has a million years to lend, and weather’s
always wild to look at down the Hellgate—
solid gray forever trailing off white rain.
Our drinks are full of sun. These aging eagles
climb the river on their own.
for Gene Jarvis