The Squaw Trade

According to local belief, Squaw Island—which
is situated in the midst of the Niagara River
near Buffalo, New York—was home for a band
of prostitutes who serviced workers from the
Erie Canal, circa 1840. Today, Squaw Island is
a municipal refuse dump for the city of Buffalo.

Slime burlap on timbers riverside, yea

More captive berths to consider: boundaries

Set by familar propositions

Of comfort and flatbottom mud. We men

Haul up some miracle of a ditch

To what’s called Squaw Island.

And such remains the canalman’s trade

At last. Harsh ways, we tell you,

Woman, your eyes and rapture averted

To the long boats pulled in tandem

To your door. How could we see then

How it was always us alone—

Unknown stations in need of poor launch?

If they could sing or even listen

A little, we’d be lost deep in the pitch

And rumble of real lives, primed

To unload a pledge or two of return.

One day, under the shadow of hawks,

We locked in the long grass

As if slugs. The aftermath was quick

Parting, forever maybe, then back

To our stories of the packet boat

Whacking through tangle reeds

And the stoop-backed Irish turning mythic

In this, a speechless country,

Almost mysterious as perfume itself.

Captivated at Little Falls, gone clean

By Weedsport, pressing toward

Those vainglorious times up in Lowertown

Where we’d stroll the day, liquor

In hand, waiting a turn at the Locks.

It should be allowed as how girls

Were not forgotten, either. Sure

In any faint light setting off-island,

You see the hair’s worn from their legs

By woolen trousers. Odd why

Such standard gossip keeps us

Huddled around cigar smoke and fun,

Ever shuffling, ready again to move soon.

After miles of stumps and clear-cut skies,

More stumps. And the deadly matter

Of building country in the calm of summer

Burdens like a search for much worse.

Thinking through a warm afternoon rain,

Thinking of getting there, downwater

Toward neglect for glory’s sake

And other never-lasting bounty,

A blessing, it seems, becomes this—

All passages so unworldly hot

As to be bitter, our own massive bones

Sweating. O Motherly touch and need,

What have we to do with thee?

Just nervous, and the skirtless brides

Seem just the same. At the taking

Of shore, there’s care for the prize

Portraiture of a girl at sixteen in your vest,

Driving you mad, and on. It’s a gravity

In the blood, unchangeable as the waif

You are, a dwarf among dwarfs, no force.

They tell you they understand. So half

The time so drunk as to see, you wear

Your life like a bandanna. That’s all

Nobody’s business. That’s all the secret

There is. But to any woman’s edges,

Rubbed soft as landscape, you are less.

Kissing that last sure drop of sweat

From a heavy lip, tongues wag easy

In this good composted land

Amid mire and flesh, a threat of snow.

We rise from a hut born

To game and holiday, knowing barely

Ourselves. None of us escape

The terrible progress we make

Suffering yet another pleasure.

Sad, say, the ways we loved like stones—

No courting dance, no feathers

Or gesture. But then nobody asked

For more than favors or strange luck.

They watch for clouds. Any muster

Could ruin business, however damp

Already the shining caves that bristle

Like pearl in moonlight. Beneath their belts

The sources of circumstance and invention

Turn nightfall to a wash. Lacking

A westerly push toward Erie, the hide

Tingles for a pressure, a sign,

If only the whine of a full day’s water

Lost to Niagara. In fair time,

The swell might thicken and warm

As soup in the casual hands

Of a visitor aging to unwelcome weathers.

So it’s Buffalo: gutspill and sideshow,

Crusade of rascals swaggering

Up Front Street. Lovey, it all passes forth—

The heart’s infirmities, our grinding

Labors .... Who hasn’t spent a life

Making civilization right and not

Gone wrong? Soon there’ll be other empires,

Then farther west, further refinements

Of the breed. We conclude here,

A rainy frontier, end of a pity. What’s more?

Ah, dreaming, we’d scheme of strangers

Above our sorry place, wise builders erecting

Able love some hundred years hence!

Like a hatch of horseflies streaming

Into gray light, we’ve grown free to cross

The flushing river on abundant piping

Of sludge. Where’s the barrelhouse,

The waste of laughter and bile that releases?

Instead there’s a world piled on bedrock,

A history failing its horizons,

Properties of muck increased by modern

Wealth. We’re where the lost bodies

Of unshared spheres intertwine

As a distant rescue from style and form,

From tales left squalid in the telling:

Now just a vigilance, faith’s fallen banner ....

Source: Walking the Blind Dog (University of Illinois Press, 1992)