The Squaw Trade

According to local belief, Squaw Island—which is situated in the midst of the Niagara River near Buffalo, New York—was home for a band of prostitutes who serviced workers from the Erie Canal, circa 1840. Today, Squaw Island is a municipal refuse dump for the city of Buffalo. 1 Slime burlap on timbers riverside, yea More captive berths to consider: boundaries Set by familar propositions Of comfort and flatbottom mud. We men Haul up some miracle of a ditch To what’s called Squaw Island. And such remains the canalman’s trade At last. Harsh ways, we tell you, Woman, your eyes and rapture averted To the long boats pulled in tandem To your door. How could we see then How it was always us alone— Unknown stations in need of poor launch? 2 If they could sing or even listen A little, we’d be lost deep in the pitch And rumble of real lives, primed To unload a pledge or two of return. One day, under the shadow of hawks, We locked in the long grass As if slugs. The aftermath was quick Parting, forever maybe, then back To our stories of the packet boat Whacking through tangle reeds And the stoop-backed Irish turning mythic In this, a speechless country, Almost mysterious as perfume itself. 3 Captivated at Little Falls, gone clean By Weedsport, pressing toward Those vainglorious times up in Lowertown Where we’d stroll the day, liquor In hand, waiting a turn at the Locks. It should be allowed as how girls Were not forgotten, either. Sure In any faint light setting off-island, You see the hair’s worn from their legs By woolen trousers. Odd why Such standard gossip keeps us Huddled around cigar smoke and fun, Ever shuffling, ready again to move soon. 4 After miles of stumps and clear-cut skies, More stumps. And the deadly matter Of building country in the calm of summer Burdens like a search for much worse. Thinking through a warm afternoon rain, Thinking of getting there, downwater Toward neglect for glory’s sake And other never-lasting bounty, A blessing, it seems, becomes this— All passages so unworldly hot As to be bitter, our own massive bones Sweating. O Motherly touch and need, What have we to do with thee? 5 Just nervous, and the skirtless brides Seem just the same. At the taking Of shore, there’s care for the prize Portraiture of a girl at sixteen in your vest, Driving you mad, and on. It’s a gravity In the blood, unchangeable as the waif You are, a dwarf among dwarfs, no force. They tell you they understand. So half The time so drunk as to see, you wear Your life like a bandanna. That’s all Nobody’s business. That’s all the secret There is. But to any woman’s edges, Rubbed soft as landscape, you are less. 6 Kissing that last sure drop of sweat From a heavy lip, tongues wag easy In this good composted land Amid mire and flesh, a threat of snow. We rise from a hut born To game and holiday, knowing barely Ourselves. None of us escape The terrible progress we make Suffering yet another pleasure. Sad, say, the ways we loved like stones— No courting dance, no feathers Or gesture. But then nobody asked For more than favors or strange luck. 7 They watch for clouds. Any muster Could ruin business, however damp Already the shining caves that bristle Like pearl in moonlight. Beneath their belts The sources of circumstance and invention Turn nightfall to a wash. Lacking A westerly push toward Erie, the hide Tingles for a pressure, a sign, If only the whine of a full day’s water Lost to Niagara. In fair time, The swell might thicken and warm As soup in the casual hands Of a visitor aging to unwelcome weathers. 8 So it’s Buffalo: gutspill and sideshow, Crusade of rascals swaggering Up Front Street. Lovey, it all passes forth— The heart’s infirmities, our grinding Labors .... Who hasn’t spent a life Making civilization right and not Gone wrong? Soon there’ll be other empires, Then farther west, further refinements Of the breed. We conclude here, A rainy frontier, end of a pity. What’s more? Ah, dreaming, we’d scheme of strangers Above our sorry place, wise builders erecting Able love some hundred years hence! 9 Like a hatch of horseflies streaming Into gray light, we’ve grown free to cross The flushing river on abundant piping Of sludge. Where’s the barrelhouse, The waste of laughter and bile that releases? Instead there’s a world piled on bedrock, A history failing its horizons, Properties of muck increased by modern Wealth. We’re where the lost bodies Of unshared spheres intertwine As a distant rescue from style and form, From tales left squalid in the telling: Now just a vigilance, faith’s fallen banner ....