questions from a reading worker

•

     — in memory of Al Nurmi

I.

        i only met you a couple of times.
   you sat in the dusty big-windowed
classroom in a building near
                     the university, the weathered
  stone of your large face, wily
     glitter in your hammer-on-the-nail
           eyes, broad mallet hands,
        heavy frame of your body a
                        churning coal furnace.
 five or six of us listened to you talk
about writing, working, cook,
        merchant sailor, life sowing
  the seeds of someday northern minnesota
                     soviets, you read your poems
      to us, you read mcgrath
          and brecht, you talked
                     about history.
    your father a bolshevik in finland,
survived the tsar’s army making massacre
  through the villages, one in five who
escaped, and then later union organizer
                       in minnesota lumber camps.
your words plain, solid, you spoke
     as a stonemason handles stone.
           you read brecht:
“Who built seven-gated Thebes?
 In the books stand the names of kings.
 Had the kings hauled the rock fragments?”
               a spring day, some sun. the room
airy, the bare wood floors gave small
    echoes. you talked about workers
  and history: history books
             that give the name of james
j. hill but don’t name
the workers who laid the railroad
             tracks, the names of pharaohs
   but not the names of slaves who
           built the pyramids:
   your eyes alive with the heat
         of it, your fists tight,
   your voice rose in the room
                   saying it:
        all of greece and rome, we have
    the names of two slaves, two
               workers, aesop and spartacus,
                          just those two.
           the copy of brecht in your hand,
     feet planted, your voice
                  a lightning and a tingle,
            your eyes crisp with daylight
                                           and iron.
                in the roll call of workers,
        al nurmi, builder of revolution,
                                 we call your name.

II.

            to say how we remember you,
              to tell how you have touched us,
         we are gathered at the river,
             by the shores of mississippi.
        thirty of us in a circle, lawn chairs
                        and flat rocks and scraps
                      of wood, on the sand.
           below the railroad bridge, its
         gray-painted garlands of steel.
                a warming evening, sun
                                      on the water.
            a shallow trench worn by run-off
          from a drainage pipe, dry slough
                    littered with rock and
                                        broken concrete.
   our faces weary with shadow, we face
each other tender as the touch of new grass.
       boards and plywood leaning
                                  in a pyramid,
    bundle of blankets from your bed,
bed where you finished your life
                 with a shotgun,
      a man pours charcoal fluid,
          brings the pyre to flame,
      carnation of sparks the cells
                     of the incendiary brain.
         i see you light the eyes of
                your friends.
        waves from a motor boat
                             whack the shore.
           a woman sings, the pipes are calling,
                she sings, love you so.

             the fire gives off loud pop sounds,
           bits of wood fly outward
                 in long arcs.
        your sister is here, she tells
                                       about military police
    marching you off ship in the locks
             at sault ste. marie, 1950’s,
        bosses hunting for bolsheviks again.
      four large dogs, labrador, german
             shepherd, scamper
        in and out of the circle, in and out
                              of the water,
        sniffing each other’s rears,
    tumbling wet against us, jokers
         joyfully worriless in our dry midst,
           clowns at your funeral, somebody
       says you would have loved
                    the dogs being here.
         a man plays a tape recording,
          your voice calling words of
             james weldon johnson
     trombone night scripture revival jam
               your voice a wind drumming
                    in a cave of a room,
           on the river a paddlewheel showboat
        sidles by southward
                      snows of yesteryear
           lazy band music eases in to shore
            smiling faces wave to us
                         men and women in
                              pearled evening dress
    on shore the burning mound
          rattles the ladder of violet twilight
        we shrug our shoulders and
                                          wave back,
          another tape recording, your voice
      yakking words of dr. seuss
             the elephant that hatches
                                        an egg
        your voice a highwire cackle
      your voice a leather hand
     jiggling loose apples of laughter
                                       in a room.
            from across the river a couple of
      loud booms, firecrackers or
              gunshots or some machine.
    on the cliff top on the far bank
    the university buildings stand
                            in their brick stillness.
         at the concrete base of a bridge pillar
       a speed limit sign for boats,
                 “no wake zone.”
       scholar of anti-wage-slavery sedition.
runo maker of workers’ collective power-taking.
                   proudly illegal to the end.

              the riverboat rolls back north
           a cascade of lights in the blue dusk.
              a man sings bob dylan, he sings
                 come shining, he sings
                                        shall be released.
            a woman sings elvis, sings
                             falling in love with you.
              the fire draws its wings in.
                  the centaur, teacher of poetry, climbs
            the sky, rides the harping meadows
                              of the night.
            the moon rises full, swings
                 its pale fruit over the river.
              we gather our belongings to go.
                  i feel my feet touch the sand.
                    by the shores of mississippi,
                      on the beach of bread and water,
                             we look at each other
            our faces quick with shadow.
               murmuring wind over stone,
                      round boned river of history.
                 we talk to each other, we
                       move together, we make this.
                  in the books stand the names
                                                   of workers.

* * *

runo: Finnish word for “poem;” especially, a poem in the oral tradition, such as those that make up the Finnish epic, the Kalevala. In the Kalevala the word is also used to mean “bard” or “poet.”