Prime

Mac OLIVER

PRIME

Dawn on the levee, an old painter & I
Watched the sky change & talked.
Ohio, god forgive her, is where my
Father's father's from: wade in tanks of pork
And corn, thank chemistry to come.
There's no heaven like heaving the hay in.
Never been, said he. I was just sent to
Minneapolis on business, barge
Of industrial molasses, cold, falls,
Mills, didn't stay, the next day St. Paul, saw
Mounds, it took weeks: Davenport, Black Hawks, Bix,
Then the long Missouri's cottonwood mix.
I prayed to St. Louis, inexhaustible
German Catholics, electricity & beer,
Flushing delta wider from Cairo, your
Clear blue Ohio browns: Memphis, Yazoo,
The past in ruins yet to be recast.
Now New Orleans, a lack of clocks & slacks
Of purple cloth, the will o'th'wisp. I see
Wicks of blue flame beading on the tanker
Chios Faith, low in the water last night, late, now
Emptied buoyant bare, light in air. The crew
Has leave on shore as drydock work ensues,
Clanging of iron loud as the lock of
A dam, piercing repair. I don't know
Why I let a day go down uninformed
Of the flaws in the hull, don't hallow the craft
To keep it from mothballs: the scorched angle
Of the iris dawning now, I feel
As after a speech, exhilaration's
Rush. But spectres of elegy
Have always glared here, off
Of these spills, the oily waterslicks
And wires rising out of yesterday's work,
Dawn on you spotting sunny lassitude's
Wincing eyesores.

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