An old man is a spindly junk pile. He is so brittle he can fall through himself top to bottom. No mirror is needed to see the layers of detritus, some years clogged with it. The red bloody layer of auto deaths of dad and sister. Deaths piled like cordwood at the cabin, the body 190 pounds of ravaged nerve ends from disease. The junk pile is without sympathy for itself. A life is a life, lived among birds and forests and fields. It knew many dogs, a few bears and wolves. Some women said they wanted to murder him but what is there worth murdering? The body, of course, the criminal body doing this and that. Some will look for miraculous gold nuggets in the junk and find a piece of fool’s gold in the empty cans of menudo, a Mexican tripe stew.
A particularly fine poem by one of America’s masters.