4769. AT FRIEDLANDER STATION

AT FRIEDLANDER STATION

The hemp-rope twined itself around

the piling  -  a wood and fiber jewel  - 

while trucks rolled in drooling. The

stevedore contingent had already arrived.

'These boats to be loaded, men, are all

ours for the task.' By 8AM, the new

sun was already old.

-

I have lived with contradictions for ages  -

like the Latin words it comes from  -  'talk

against' or 'one diction in opposition'. However

you'd like it, there it is. And  -  whoops again  - 

the yellow sun is shining in the rain.

-

Young boys playing marbles by the alleyway

walls  -  the church on eleventh street with its

too-precious school and its absurd blessings  -

all of these things fight me to contradict, go

against my heart, speak foul things.

Go on, go on then, growl.

-

Another truck has just come bounding into the

yard  -  more noisy than the others, more sinful,

seemingly, than the ovenbird bums nearby. I

remember finding a dead bird at the edging, there,

with its beautiful beak : yellow/gold and long,

like a needle-point-dagger, I buried it in the

nearby soil  -  beak and all.

-

'Used for digging bugs and probing,' the bird book

said about that beak. I didn't know a thing. Now the

men are throwing bales and barrels, instants sparking

on the pavement  -  unceasing rumble and rattle and

racket. All that, it seems to me, at Friedlander Station;

used for digging bugs and probing, perhaps, in a

pure contradiction to my imagination.