He sat the beer down, and pulled a cigarette

from the crumpled pack on the table.

The pack is as red as his spit,

and white as his face after morning coughs
squeeze his blood into the bathroom sink,

a giant invisible fist gripping hard,

forcing the last resistant drop

out of an almost empty tube of paste.

Drawing in a lung full of stress,

he exhales it out with a sigh of relief,

and the smoke around his face lifts

and shows a beautiful smile in the midst

of a bristly rugged surface, a meadow

uncovered when the morning fog

on a treed mountainside lifts.

A continuity of this land, he traded

pieces of his soul like many who

came before, worked the land,

took from the hills, and in return

became part of this earth, part of the

clay and soil of the land. His laugh,

rough as boots on gravel. The lines

around his eyes count years. His face

a dark red stain in igneous rock, iron

mined and forged, shackled to his leg,

binding him to this place, these people,

and life in these hills.

And when the cough starts we look away.

Embarrassed because its not one of us.

Ashamed because we're glad,

it is not, (we are not cowards)

one of us. (we men of the hills)

We raise our glasses to our captain, striking out ahead,

discovering the pain, marking the trail

so the rest of us know,

where to avoid the dangerous paths,

where people lose their scalps,

are robbed of their hunger,

and where a man is able to

tell the future with no uncertainties

of what lies around the next curve,

and beer makes us brave,

but it only lasts a little while.

Learn more about this author, Ralph Weld.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

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