The Butte. Good Friday.
The Frenchman is dead.
Bow your head.
Say a prayer.
The Frenchman is dead.
Hopped a train -- age eight.
Joined the carney,
Challenged
The wall of death.
The Frenchman is dead, bow your heads, say a prayer.
Went to sea
Became a sailor
Seller of moonshine
Turned creator of gold-plated contraptions
Lost on the moon.
The Frenchman is dead.
Bow your head. Say a prayer.
Married.
Moved his wife to a gravedigger shack
Near the Butte
Next to the Queen of the Angels
Cemetery,
Eying
Rivers and mountains and glaciered filled skies.
The Frenchman is dead.
-- Self-proclaimed:
Proprietor of
Boot Hill Auto Salvation.
(Antique and classic)
His life’s ambition
Read and written
In the Holy Grail of
Abandoned car parts
-- A creaking
Harrisville Ferris wheel reaching to heaven,
And
Trunks and hoods -- and
Tires
And horns, and headlights.
Twisted skeletons of wasted steel.
Junkyard dreams.
Waiting . . .
All waiting in the weeds
For the salvage of judgment day.
The Frenchman is dead.
Bow your head. Say a prayer.
“Brother of The Third Wheel,”
He was
Iron crossed.
Road a pan head
223-pieces of gold.
The Frenchman is dead.
Today.
Took his last custom-made ride
On the wild Matanuska winds --
The Frenchman is dead.
Bow your head. Say a prayer.
M.F. Nagel was born in anchorage Alaska. Her Athabaskan and Eyak heritage gave her a love of poetry. M.F. now lives and writes near the banks of the Matanuska river in the Palmer Butte, Alaska, where the moose, wild dog-roses and salmonberries provide unending joy and inspiration.