St. Paul historical blotter : November

where my hands freeze, write less, where
stories, my stories transmute likeness
likelihood like heat to blood in family places,
I look for the dead butchers of Saint Paul,
the handlers of industry turning wares out from barges,
stoneworkers on the cliffs, builders in steel or white jade.
I look for bar tabs still unpaid across from the cathedral.

from across the century... the names of my ancestors break
my heart, but they pass by along Summit on evenings,
to the cathedral, they are on trolleys or horses, on foot,
black hands, clean knuckles white pressed shirts.
they laugh in the streetcars or step quick, avoiding mud
splashing from another unpaved street. delicious cold of
every Winter Carnival, they were spectators and owners
and wives and entrepreneurs, until they couldn’t take the cold
anymore and went by train at last to California.

cold now, but Uncle Peter’s cigars still warm me
like Mars and Orion, laughing lights, the First Insurance
tower welcoming all to the garden edge of architectural bluffs
over Raspberry Island, Harriet Island, places named for school-
teachers and priests, the old cave Pig’s Eye staked out, lost
under all that work of decent people who could let
no mushrooms grow under their feet,

who saw more than selling whiskey to Indians in a place
they were making in the last eastern city before the wilderness,
the prairies. the world wrapped them up at night, to sleep.

11/10/06