Bullfight

When I spear a chunk of bone gardening it's pleistocenelater, I'm a dead man, blue-eyed, recognizedas Richard, long-ago crushed, by someone he knew I didn'tin the redwoods, where they stand, it's hardly true,near the rocky mussel beds, wind slapping,at a school of baffled mackerelunder the broad dining room windowI lock eyes with Captain Grey Squirrelcritical sweatshirt, anchor cap, whiskers,who stood it forty five years, leaningover boat-side--half-drunk--recitingFish and Game regulationspinching bottoms later at Snug Harbor and counting broken bones in the lot outsidewatching a cop drag by, one lane, toward Dolphin Cove where he was no usewe broke open & pilfereda tourist vehicle for the blood-rush and fifteen bucks,half a lump of cocaine and a roachrunning home on the ancient trail from the boat-basin to the whorehousesdowntown, a rut through the brushwhere countless virtues became confusedthe bastard children of labor and homemade dresses, like young wild bulls,crying at the gate in the stone mistout of infinite tidal murk, smoking crackin cow horns, knocking on the eternal--it's pleistocene in dry black soilon Portagee Flat. Astounding vegetableswhich make it through the winter whole.