Allen Itz

sunset on South Alamo

the air is still at sunset,
a pause before night edges
out days shortened
by the passing of summer

here on South Alamo,
traffic slows
and lights brighten
curtained windows
across the way

the sun dips to afterglow
and the night air comes,
whispering quiet
through spreading shadows

curtains blow

leaves rustle

not far away, the river
flows green and sluggish
between cobbled walkways,
music drifts across the water and
through the gathering crowds

here, in this neighborhood,
night begins
as quietly as day has ended

things to watch out for when entering into a barroom confrontation

he's a tall guy
and he walks
like tall guys
walk
not with any particular
arrogance
but as if concerned
with matters
invisible to us
more earth-bound,
his head moving
side to side
looking, always,
over our heads,
seeing things
we won't see
until sometime
later

in the presence
of such really tall,
even the merely tall,
like me,
feel ourselves
somehow diminished

I wonder
if I have the same effect
on the less than
tall

no wonder
short guys
are so combative

should it ever happen
you fall into
a barroom brawl
like in the movies,
watch out for the
short guys

they have much
to prove
and might well
prove it on
you

morning coffee

the coffee crowd
gathers
at the cafe door

we talk
make jokes
tell lies
until the cafe
opens
then crowd
quickly inside
to jockey
for first position
at the coffee counter

for an hour of two
we are best friends
sharing an island
of contention
and companionship
in the slow-passing day
of passed-over men

total strangers
when coffee hour
ends
until
the next day
when the long wait
for sunset

esperanzas

first summer
out of high school
I worked on a construction crew
building an electric power line
through Rincon ranch,
right on the border
between Rio Grande City
and Laredo

godforsaken place

120 degrees
in the summertime
in the shade, except
there is no shade
and it's always summertime,
nothing lives here
but the toughest of the tough

cactus
scrubby cedar
and huisache brush
yellow jackets
fire ants
scorpions
rattlesnakes
and three kinds of poisonous lizard

it was a terrible place to work
for the six of us on the crew

JW was the foreman,
a square-built, quiet-talking,
working-cowboy looking man
said to be so strong
he could squeeze wire cutters
in one hand until the handles broke

nobody messed with JW

the older lineman, Wiley,
was, like most of the men in his line of work,
small and wiry, not much to look at
until you saw him climb 60 foot poles
hour after hour
like he was on a sunday walk
through the park

the younger lineman
was a guy everybody called Bird
because, at six feet four inches tall,
sitting at the top of a pole
with his long skinny legs
sticking out through hot wire
that could kill him if touched,
he looked like some kind of sore-footed
crane tip toeing through icy water

there were three of us who were laborers,
called, in the lingo of the business, grunts

the job of the grunt was to do
all the heavy lifting work on the ground,
sending tools and materials up to the lineman
on a rope, pre-assembling cross arm hardware,
pulling new wire from pole to pole
and digging holes
for the long rods with expanding heads
that anchored sections of line

as the new grunt
(and temporary besides)
I did most of the digging,
sometimes spending most of a day
digging through the packed caliche and rock
to set an anchor

Rojo
was one of the other grunts,
a redheaded,
freckle-faced Mexican
who did most of the wire pulling
because he had the heft to pull like a bull,
digging his feet in and pulling,
three or four spans at a time

Horacio was the other grunt,
the oldest man on the crew
and, of all the things I learned that summer,
about hard work
in the company of hard men,
I learned the most from him

I was 18, a big guy
in good physical condition
and accustomed to work
but Horacio, forty years older,
small and dark-skinned from years in the sun,
round-shouldered and soft looking,
could outwork me day after day

he was barely educated,
but smart
and, with a lifelong habit of attentiveness,
knew more about the work we were doing
than anyone else on the crew, except JW

in better days
he could have become a lineman
or even a foreman,
but the better days were too late for him
so he retired after fifty years of hard work
making barely more than I made
as a temporary summer worker

I was thinking about Horacio
and the rest of the crew this afternoon
when I was down at the Home Depot
buying some esperanzas to plant
for my brown, desiccated back yard,
looking so bad it reminds me
of the summer on Rincon ranch

but not everywhere

over in the corner of the yard
I have some esperanzas
that have survived now
three winters and two summers,
their bright yellow flowers
shining like little sun blossoms,
even in the shade

survivors

pretty yellow flowers
that live and glow in the heat of driest summer

and soft looking little men like Horacio