His roofer hands are like
his fathers, over-sized for 
his size, like the old coat 
his older brother out-grew 
and he came to wear.  Wash
with industrial soap, the
hands are never clean. 
Tar lines in the skin, under 
the nails, make the fingers 
look like wooden shapes, 
and all the nicks and cuts 
are in the grain.

Now the thinking is to omit the jug 
head procedure, work the surface as fact 
to engineer the popular sciences, a name
and passage to brilliant ideas, walled in 
surfaces, wide form, building tall in the
sitting positions, arm sectors, test whole 
villages and nations the way sandwiches 
evolve, layered, instruction pads, oil toll 
brands, words set in mortise, cut to copy, 
stumble in name tag nature, road maps, 
where worlds are bottom-line scores, and 
less mentors for the elementary arts to 
herald the fresh springing sod that make 
a child's response off center and whole. 

Love exchanged with prickly care intended to suffice 
the name with dull and firm device when daily bread 
makes trespassing inscrutable, hallowed be thy names, 
a place in the same house and chores through rooms 
and halls, an empty box with plain sides a moment to 
deflate, dissolve, as some who work through fog or night 
or roam the streets and run the measure with all they 
know in line or level everything we lack or miss, have a 
way, something unsaid, a table with food to share or hide, 
the others gone as quick as random waves, the choice a 
child makes in water lore, in soil breaks with grip to lift 
the wing the other way, drag the wash across the line
of vines, by empty walls in one frame of light.

A whole string of good yantefs, bravissimos, 
and skol to seal the deal.  I'm trying to get away 
from institutional and connubial bliss promising 
to inject a note of earthy stuff, all plus myself, a 
lowly addenda who sends love that doesn't stop 
at just any silly old crossing.  Hang on to that 
ticket to posterity, skol, palachinka, salami and 
shnapps, love and long after.  I love that kid glove 
stuff when it comes from friends, since I never 
learned to write by hand and the only person 
who could decipher my writing is dead behind 
the iron curtain.  I merely meant to say, see what 
a good club you belong to.  Let me hear from 
you when you get in the middle of the fracas.
The cat generation could have given birth to a 
much greater civilization than we poor suckers 
who insist that the globe was made for us.  Put 
in an extra swoosh for me and strain it through 
your kidneys.  Sad when your letters come to 
an end.  The burden of our economy is anything 
but light, however an occasional kilbaszi and a 
swig of drinkable is available by sheer divine 
intercession.  Dorothy arrives today with Michael 
and the 'thing',  a scooter, that is fast replacing
his parents.  Trust someday you may come up 
here and see that Grand Teton is not the only 
wilderness- and the Yankees can be just as wild 
as Tetonic fauna.  Life here goes on in amity 
and considerable creativity and not too much
concern, but genuine gratification, fondest 
sentiments and do vidzena.  I hope the great 
one will help you decipher my Balkan scrawl.
The envelope is addressed to both – it is because 
one cannot think of you separately.  Do say that 
you'll be back before another 10,000 years 
pass by letting me know a few hours or maybe 
even a day to allow me to prepare the kilbaszi 
and a jug of chianti. The breeze is from the west, 
the air crystalline and the receding hills are a
heavenly cobalt.