by Michael Macklin

We swim out to the smaller world
where weathered wood
holds its place
tugging at its mucky tether.

Spread our dripping bodies
on sun-warmed boards
at the edge of safety
while the hills watch.

The deeper sea calls,
a loon echoes.
We are climbing ribbons of cloud,
floating into dreams that move
above and below.

Do you feel the current
passing through us?

Do you see the house of heaven?

by Philip A. Waterhouse

The automatic voice intoning — You are now
flying over the North Pole — you willing to be
recrossing the polar bear wastes barefoot
if needed to get back in Paris, one brief sojourn
not enough, never want to have to say
-Farewell-again except for be-back-soons
before visits to other European arts and
entertainment and culinary centers
which can never take precedence, though,
over the tasteful dishes, wines and ambience
of L’Absinthe, her poetic sidewalk tables
at only appropriate continental yards away
from the same surface exit/entry of
Paris’ rocket metro subway passengers —

bootless
barefooted

by Philip A. Waterhouse

West of the Mississippi, we were called gandy dancers,
slang term for railroad “section hands” the north east,
the same gut work in designated sections of rail traffic,
installing new creosoted log track ties, re-aligning and
leveling track with iron tamping bars, winters worst
digging out snowed-over or flooded crossings, then
energy draining humid summers, Willie, the French-
Canadian foreman, feeding us salt pills and laughing
about what they would do to our male section,
me also working the gut on college vacations both
hot and frigid seasons to help pay college tuition,
one particular winter, for dumb pride at keeping up
in good physical shape, turned down a chance to
work a ritzy resort, volunteered to go into a freight car
and pry at ice-locked Australian steer hides marked
for local tanneries, to loosen them for unloading with
the tamping bar until at Willie’s order, my safety’s sake,
literally slid out of the icy boxcar lucky to escape
the frozen knife-edge hides’ sudden loose shiftings,
landed at boots of wiser “hands,” one reaching down
said something in Canuck caused snickers, friendly.

by William Heyen

The trainer found him hanging in the locker room
early morning before the game.

Statics was naked except for jock and socks,
& the belt around his neck.

At first the trainer thought he was breathing —
just shadows or something.

The coroner said he’d been dead for hours,
maybe since last year

after he missed that kick.  We still see the ball
held up against the shearwall.