prevailed, limestone centuries.

When I went up to Toronto

in the draft,

my Local Board was there on Main Street,

above a store that bought and sold pistols.

I'd once traded that man a derringer for a

Walther P-38.

The pistols were in the window

behind an amber roller-blind

like sunglasses.

I was seventeen or so but basically I guess

you just had to be a white boy.

I'd hike out to a shale pit and run

ten dollars worth of 9mm

through it, so worn you hardly

had to pull the trigger.

Bored, tried shooting

down into a distant stream but

one of them came back at me

off a round of river rock

clipping walnut twigs from a branch

two feet above my head.

So that I remembered the mechanism.

V.

In the all night bus station

they sold scrambled eggs to state troopers

the long skinny clasp-knives called fruit knives

which were pearl handled watermelon-slicers

and hillbilly novelties in brown varnished wood

which were made in Japan.

First I'd be sent there at night only

if Mom's carton of Camels ran out,

but gradually I came to value

the submarine light, the alien reek

of the long human haul, the strangers

straight down from Port Authority

headed for Nashville, Memphis, Miami.

Sometimes the Sheriff watched them get off

making sure they got back on.

When the colored restroom

was no longer required

they knocked open the cinderblock

and extended the magazine rack

to new dimensions,

a cool fluorescent cave of dreams

smelling faintly and forever of disinfectant,

perhaps as well of the travelled fears

of those dark uncounted others who,

moving as though contours of hot iron,

were made thus to dance