Red Canyon Petroglyph
Lizard Butte
Most of the time Al’s face was sideways,
Laughing as he drove, a beer held down,
He viewed the dry cornfields, the migrating geese,
Saw it all along with the dust from the combines,
All the dust of the harvest season slipping away
The eyes irrepressible, shiny with drink and mischief,
Still a sixteen-year-old runaway from Texas in his heart,
Though he was thirty-three
With utilities to pay and car payments and kids to raise
But it was the weekend, and he was with me,
Younger, I having seen some of the world but not questioning
Al, because he had seen the world in a certain way
Before I had seen it, and had instructed me how it could turn,
And still surprised me with his lessons, like how he walked
Into the wrong bar in Marsing, where the white bartender
Recognized him from having been a loudmouth
At the Mexican bar across the road who knows when,
And knocked out Al two weeks ago and had the ambulance
Haul him away. Well, I preferred his lessons about planting
Corn and wheat and alfalfa and the long days on the tractor.
He actually preferred the long days working old man Ankeny’s
Land too, loves the land, the hardship, the promise of something,
Maybe a promise kept or wondered at, — like the geese returning
Every fall to fly by to wherever, stopping to eat the corn
Spilled in the fields, preferred those stories but when he was drinking
His other stories began as his face turned sideways
That was the weekend, driving in the country by Lizard Butte.
_____________
Zeke Sanchez