Sabine Pass, Texas  August, 1977

My fellow deck-hand, Ronnie,
escaped a gang of Nashville dealers, 
hitched down to the Gulf
to cold turkey off heroin.
I’m just tying bowlines for summer bucks.
On a deadbeat Saturday, Ronnie 
hooks us up with a local yahoo
stoned out of his gourd by 4 p.m.

We loll on this home-boy’s front porch.
He doesn’t move or twitch for a half hour.
Then two humming birds dip and join
at the hip just above tridents of canna lilies.
The guy throws his head back and cries out, 
“ Damn if that ain’t cuter
than a spotted pup in a new red wagon.” 

The three of us end up at last call
in a bar with an interior decor
like an oil slick on wrenched seas.
Everyone is stiff, silent, pickled
until the needle drops
into K23 on the juke box.

Deck hands, crew-boat Captains, Ronnie,
home-boy, boiler-masters and a few Debs,
start to sing in unison to no one in particular –
low, breathy bent into bar or table tops
where brown bottles are microphones.

It’s a chorus of skunked angels,
without a soprano in the bunch.
(“ Back in Luckenbach, Texas,
ain’t nobody feeling no pain.”)
We sing as if these words 
hold the only hope around
and the song itself is what
sheds light off mirror glass.

Vernon, Texas. March, 2013

Often I end up in a nondescript motel 
needing something. I find a quick-stop
where grime multiplies under pale fluorescence.
The squared-off fingers of a store owner
punch the register. Large knuckles 

mean the man or woman is stubborn, 
determined, analytical which all bode well
for running a business. These owners 

mop their own linoleum, hawk-eye
riff-raff that try to palm candy bars,
slide Buds into hoodie pockets
or pop a Glock out of jeans.

They comb customers over,
calculate risks. Under their eyes,
I begin to catalogue 
my own character flaws, the ones
I’ve known since second grade
when Sister Mary Cristobal
first started the list.