ONE JACK Jack Presley Was a Tarheel hooktender Who moved from the Carolinas For the Northwest's big timber. One Saturday night, We on the Van de Grift Logging rigging-crew Heard, Jack got into a fight At the Hamilton Tavern And bit off another man's ear, Gladys the bartender yelling "Go, Jack, go!" On Saturday mornings Jack used to ride through Sedro Wooley In the back-set of his big, red Cadillac With his wife driving it, We also heard. His hair and jaw Thick like a wolf's, Jack Presley resembled the young, truck-driving Elvis. Jerry Umdall, my fellow choker-setter, Had a framed photo of Elvis above his and his wife's bed. One day Jerry asked Jack If he and Elvis were related. "Your last name is spelled the same way." "He's my nephew," Jack said And made his exit along a log into the misty brush. The seven of us on the crew For Van de Grift's gypo outfit Worked Monday through Saturday, The day after New Year's onward, 1974, Our routine dark to dark, 5:00 wake-up in the morning, 7:00 at night back to the house, Our crummie-ride from and to Interstate 5/Highway 20, the Skagit Valley, 90 minutes of modern Country each way, Our slack-line show above Granite Falls, Our time on the hill nine hours, dawn to dusk. I had to leave the crew at the end of January, I'd told Jack when he'd called on Christmas Day. Snow and fog and eagles that swooped and soared were our norm As we on the rigging picked up with our chokers The logs of Doug Fir crisscrossed and bucked down the clear-cut mountainside. On Wednesday of my last week The tail-hold of multiple stumps and trunks that Jack had rigged Across the creek Pulled with a sound of rushing rupture, inch-and-a-half-thick mainline Cutting through snowy, gray air from a half-mile high and snapping snakelike downhill. We had to pack 90-pound coils of haywire from the landing to rig a new tail-hold. It was then my my turn to cross the haywire strung over the creek and yard Jack, Jerry, Norvel and Irv across. I mistakenly went boots-first along the haywire. About 2/3 across its 60-or-so feet length, I could advance no farther and had to let go, Dropping about 15 feet into the storms-swollen creek And then in one flash of time emerging From the icy water and scrambling up the bank of earth and ferns and roots, Standing there like, as Irv particularly observed, "a drowned rat." The next day, second turn of our resumed logging, a 30-foot log Whirled loose in the snow and pinched my right leg between it and another, Stopped only by a stob sticking in the hillside From killing me, as Jerry said, "d-e-a-d dead." After both accidents, Jerry also related, "Jack's face turned white as a sheet." Jack Presley's blue eyes Searched with a boy's clear innocence The rare times that a tail-hold or other problem Perplexed him. First, 1970s. Published in Flares 2002. Version here December 3, 2019.

BUSTER WORLEY Buster Worley, a hooktender At Ketchikan Pulp's Thorne Bay camp. Rigged lift-trees 90 feet up Trunks of Sitka Sporing and Doug Fir, Sawing off branches and hinging his block and coil Like a cowboy steeplejack In his boots, spurs and hickory-shirt, His Boss of the Road pants suspendered, His age then 58. Of the right "runty"--he said--size to ride bulls, Buster got caught in a derrick-fire Back home in Oklahoma. "Fa-WHOOSH!" he said to us on his rigging-crew. "That thing went up like we'd stuck oil, But we'd struck fire." The fire made Buster's ears like serrate buttons. Buster also told us about working on the rigging With a son from his previous wife Before that son went off to the Naval Academy. "That boy was a boil on my ass, And I was his, But we gave this Company some production!" One afternoon Buster bet a quart of whiskey That I'd win the race in to the landing When the yarder-engineer blew that day's Final whistle. I tripped and Mike Worthington, our rigging-slinger, won. Saturday night, we walked up from our bunkhouses To the hook's house-trailer for our party. Buster brought out his debt of Jack Daniels. We talked about the strike looming For bunkies and home-guard against Ketchikan Pulp. Buster remembered Woodworkers of the World Coming up against "the owners down South." He said: "They were some hard-asses, But we were dee-termined, and we held out, and we won." He dandled his baby boy and took food from his Longhaired, young wife for the child and himself Between pouring us goblets of whiskey and ginger ale. The next Spring Buster and I were On different crews at Thorne Bay. He'd become a yarder-engineer. We spoke on a bus that took us to separate sites. He'd quit drinking, he said-- "Just bucked her right off"-- And Louisiana Pacific had bought Ketchikan Pulp.

JACK GROVES Jack Groves, my first Driller, From Lake Charles, Louisiana, Started in the oil-field Depression times, when hands slept out On the ground by their rig or pipeline. A lot of folks around Lake Charles played guitar. Jack did, And he swam across that Lake Ev’er Summer’s day, back and forth, “If you can look at that Lake now And believe it was possible.” He met his wife while walking after supper. "She was just a girl, 15 years old, on a porch swing.” Her voice lilted through the honeysuckled air. Jack asked her: "Would you like To go to the movies with me?" They were married the next year. A young Paratrooper in the Second World War, Jack afterward got to where He knew something on the Floor, Made Driller, and worked offshore Of Johannesburg, Iran and Singapore. Strong like a bull, His neck like Siva’s or Hu’s, Jack talked about his best friend Back on the pipeline, a Cherokee. "That old boy would get drunk and want To fight a circular-saw." Jack made roughnecks who sassed him Repeat jobs. “You just have to remember I'm older, uglier 'nd meaner than any of Each night in our Houston motel-room Jack talked on the phone with his wife In Broussard, Louisiana About the weather, their health, Her garden, and TV stars. Offshore, in the Galley Of platform-rigs or tender-ships, Drillers and Toolpushers “Drink coffee and tell lies." One day the subject got onto, Jack said to me: "Would you let your son marry a Black-- They said another word for Black--woman? I told them I'd married the wife I wanted, So I guessed my son could marry The wife that he wanted." After that, Jack said: "Men I thought were my friends Acted like I was Black, too." Jack Groves liked Jimmie Rodgers, Wayne Newton, And Bukka White's blues.

Text of the review can be read here--https://donpaulwearerev.com/flipping-the-script/review-of-jack-hirschman-s-selecion-of-poems-front-lines

"CONTINENTAL VEINS" Will, he had a doo-rag Will, he had some yellow slacks He flashed his eyes along the drag He said, "Gimme some action. Give me something new." He was a wild boy. He jumped from the balcony He lit out for the Territory Dreamin' like in Bound for Glory Cowboys drinkin' all night Teachers wantin' one more He said, "Oh-kay, guy." He said, "Ooh--ooh, girl!" Those Continental veins Continental veins From the Rock to the Lake To those flood-lit Great Plains Over and under The heaps of our pains He came back to nowhere else to go Looked out, drunk, on the cars' seas Neon next to Jesus, tail-lights more than trees Cried "This is so much worse than it suppos't to be!" He flew off to some old countries Death a whistle and whisper in his years Saw turtles paddle Oceans, houses made of leaves, Tillers in their fields, and people working free Those Continental veins Continental veins From the Crown to the Hills To those folk in their fields Over and under The heaps of our pains. 'Listen for the music that is there.'--Matt Gonzalez in his Foreword to the book Flares.