He brushed aside some moonlight
from his white hair, felt naked where
his hard-hat should have been,
for he'd no more leave his chalk or
rule behind than he'd forget to wear
his pants or tie his shoes. At night
his head would fill with schedules
for tomorrow, and he was
builder through and through
as he stood among the smells
of dust and excavated soil.

But now, standing by that crook'd canal
'meander', they'd say, on an illusion
of the valley plain - proximal:
I thought we had a broken pipe to mend;
distal: it seemed a lot of good money
went flowing down that Costa Mesa drain.
It would remain an enigma throughout
his long and competent career; to this day
a puzzle in that aging builder's brain.

Back then, the trucks and cranes would
meet in near collision as one more time
the gang-boss would survey the route
to where, first thing in the morning,
giant slabs of concrete would swing
above the street in strange aerial ballet.
Now, at his feet, only the wild moon
struck its solitary note upon the ground-skin
of that crazy-patterned sandstone floor.

No more now, than then, did he know
why anyone would spend such a huge
amount of dough on a pile of bean-bag
rock. He'd recall that cymbal'd hall,
its clang of steel and the groaning koan
of the wrecking ball. It cost a bundle
to be sure, in this place where straight lines
were forbidden and 'plumb' meant something
so uncertain he'd pluck the string, like a fool-
blind actor looking for an opening in the curtain,
to guess 'true' was somewhere 'over there'
and drive a stake in the approximate rough
where Noguchi, stood on ancient bean fields
yelling, "Roger, That's good enough! That's good enough.

"Jeesh, it was nuts," he'd say, as much
to the old man, once or twice before.
"Never seen such lunacy, or grown men
who'd bluff it out the way they did,"
as if they knew some special mix, some ore
would suddenly erase the doubt of where a wall
would end and where the sky begin.

Segerstrom? He'd come each day and stare
as though transfixed, while that other fellow,
'Guchi' ran about, digging in the soils of his mind
for surprises blueprints never mention,
lima bean stones placed there, just so,
in ancient airs watered by spontaneous invention.

They were glad to oblige, while the money flowed
and the gang-boss subtracted days from margins
calculated to the dime, to wonder how the hell
to bring this job to some conclusion anywhere
in the vicinity of something like on time.

I tell you, this art thing can eat holes in plans
you could drive a cat through, paint and all.
We'd never a clue to where that Noguchi
might be heading. Damnedest thing I ever saw.
Bean fields made more sense, the mall did, too,
the place that food and paychecks grew in watered sands.

We'd move a little earth and he'd say, Good!
Then we'd move a little heaven too, and Noguchi
saw me scowl and come to where I added up the days.
"But Roger, its perfect! it's Perfect! Just as it should,"
he'd say, "Don't worry so much about it. Leave it that way.
Just drop your plumb to that angle there...you'll see.

Then, once again, the gang-boss touched his
naked hair and watched as the moon-struck
glass facade shimmered in the damp night air,
thinking he heard the thundering sound
of falling falls and, somewhere on his right,
a pile of bean-bag rock that seemed to move
in the shadowy garden's tree-bent light.

Jeesh! he said, What the hell? as he watched
a reflection ripple by his feet, a meander
running high and flowing toward and not away
from the little bean that now began to dream
its thirst away; drew itself and its illusionary house
to the forest of Nicormats and Infomatic Inc.s
that had followed in the spirit of the day.

His first thought was he had to call.
till he remembered what he was about
and when. Then our aging builder simply turned,
adjusted his imaginary hard-hat brim,
check the angle once again, a course-correction
past those waters that were flowing out, not in,
and wandered off to where he thought he'd been
before, in the direction of some far too distant wall.

©1999 Red Slider, all rights reserved.