not building one-piece

working in boilers belts furnaces smelters stampers
radical atoms
sweating out working through
until electricity whines
grunching louder minute by minute days weeks months
working where
why know-why
surfacing over deepwater and flats sounding mosquito-like
around missing floating city
fishing away compression pain
mind access
radio signals eternity

warehouse parking lot at sunrise
(the american standard plumbing manufacturing plant in canton closed in 1972)

on colgate creek

i met paul on the double track racer
sitting together
tick
tick
tick
tick
up so slow
to the apex
moonlight on water
water all below
free we fly
side by side
down in gravitys waterfall
faster than the other track.

i sail with the merchant marine
paul keeps order in a counting house
and covers the waterfront when i am at sea.
have the
wars and votes and villas and what.

not notorius ribald wild
we walk together in riverview
a band plays
eubie and noble and un maestro italiano
we are together on boardwalk benches
family

industrial creek at sunrise
(in 1890 riverview park, the first of half a dozen local amusement parks, opened for whites on point breeze on the shores of colgate creek and the patapsco, south of what is now broening highway—it closed in 1929—gwynn oak was the last to close, in 1973)