West Marginal

Saint Paul, 11 September 2007

Dedicated to Richard Hugo

We never saw the real

West Marginal Way

on the banks of the Duwamish

below White Center

There weren’t ghost ads

Baked onto outfield walls

But boundless big skies of hope

Like a freightless right-of-way

Disjoins a picnic-less park

We didn’t see you play ball

Wary of being fooled

Waiting on pitches then

Taking it the other way

Another broken bat single

We never discovered

The contents of your briefcase

How some items sunk you

And others kept you afloat

Like an unspoken vice or two

We heard you a trip before Skye

You read the most forlorn of poems

delivered it by cloudless exhilaration

in a breathless cadence some

Two years before your last sigh

Still we never saw

the real West Marginal Way

on the banks of the Duwamish

below White Center

Notes:

The Duwamish (doo-WAHM'-ish) River

The Real West Marginal Way - A Poet's Autobiography by Richard Hugo