Blue Collar Eulogy

(an open letter to Ralph)

 
The sky was so incredibly blue 
On the day after you died 
Soft and deep
It threatened to pick me up
Pull me up
If I looked at it too long
Leaving me hanging there
Suspended above the treetops
And telephone lines
Caught in between yesterday and today
In a place where your eyes are still clear
And your heart slams like a jackhammer
In your chest
While you laugh about a close call 
You had on your way home
 
So here I am
65,000 pounds of concrete and steel
Roaring down State Highway 79
At sixty-five plus miles an hour
On the verge of a transcendental experience
 
I keep seeing flashes of your cynical smile
Photo memories of knowing you
Would you have known
That it has been almost exactly a year
Since I first rolled onto this jobsite?
I had no idea then of who you were
Or how knowing you would teach me
Just how tenuous a grasp
Each of us has on this moment
 
Ralph, were you aware of this link?
The bond that can't be explained
Only acknowledged
It commands that I stop this truck
Pull over! Write this, now!
 
But blue-collar keeps on going
Hell, Ralph
One thing we both knew
Blue-collar got a job to do
 
I roll onto the jobsite
Raising a cloud of dust
That lingers like a gritty halo
Around my machine
 
Do you remember that slow pour
Over in Area One?
When I told you about the Whiteboy Blues?
God, did you laugh
How many months since we stood in the dark
Sky lit by a dreamfire moon and the stars
Like the eyes of a million spiders
Skittering from horizon to horizon
What did we say that night
As the trucks howled past
Engines screaming painfully
At the deaf ears of the moon
Load after load
Tires tearing at the ground
Raising up a red cloud
That clawed its way slowly south
Like the frightened ghost 
Of a crippled dog
 
I bitched about my job
You bitched about yours
Then each of us bitched about the other
I think we both heard
What was really being said
 
"Jesus, Charlie, I love this shit!"
 
"I hear ya, Ralph."
 
"There's like this little boy inside me, Charlie
and he live for this . . . yeah, he love the noise and dirt
and hangin' wit' the big boys.
He like gettin' respect for a job well done,
He need that."
 
"Check this out, Ralph,
like, you know how a new pair
of work boots smells?"
 
"I know just what you sayin', Charlie."
 
"Okay . . . how about the way
those boots grip your feet
and, like
anchor you to the ground
until for a moment it feels like you're here forever . . ."
 
"Yeah, Charlie . . . and don't forget
how that leather squeak when you walk
how it talk to you
when you draggin' yourself off the site
at day's end
Then there's the way a hammer in yo' toolbelt
slap yo' ass when you hump up a ladder
then
when you almos' to the top
another man reach down to give you a hand up
and from the point of his chin
a drop of sweat fall, hittin' you 
in the corner of an eye and for one blind moment . . .
. . . brothers . . ."
 
Well, my friend
You never knew I was a poet
And truly
You probably wouldn't have understood
Had I told you
Even so, there was something
 
Ralph, I guess men like us
Don't quote verse or paint pictures
But this job
This job is our monument
Our Cheops, our Tenochtitlan
 
The sky was so incredibly blue
On the day after you died
Soft and deep
It threatened to pick me up
Pull me up
And leave me hanging there
 
I don't pretend to know
Where you are off to
But if they ask you
What you did with your life
I can hear you saying
 
"I never wrote a song, but I sang one.
I sang because I built things.
I took mud and stone and sweat
and I built things . . . and I loved it."
 
Hell, Ralph
If I hadn't met you
I may never have remembered
The part of me that loves it, too
 
Rest in peace, Bro',
I'll see ya on the next big one
 
30 august, 1990
mag
©1990 chas altvater