Breaking Out the Shovel

Breaking Out the Shovel


Sometimes it is better not to know
How far the digging needs to go
Or if someone will come out and help
----Alex Kuko


Beginning somewhere near the reservation
I took shovel in hand and dug, expected

no help with the geography and distance
between first slice into earth and
the last.

How the need to believe the childhood story
of digging all the way to China forced my
hand

to shovel, heart to a terrible dream. Friend,
I was amazed to rise from 500 years of
digging

to find you halfway across your own dreams
shovel in your hand, digging from Beijing

straight down through the globe, never
knowing exactly where you would surface next:

in Buenos Aires; at Forbes Field leaning
over the rail to grab Clemente's last foul tip;

at a battered piano stunned by the Goldberg
Variations. How was I to know drums were
never enough

music to fill the silence of children left
and dreams put quietly to bed?

Friend, this is a strange journey, digging
for hours, then days, through generations
of need

and it is better not to know how much
farther the digging needs to go,
but I want you to know

I often stop for rest, ask directions,
gauge distance and how much I need help

with this digging, this life, measured
meter by meter. I move through history

and my story and your story, gathering
into our warmth, this heart changing
by halves.


Sherman Alexie..........from Old Shirts & New Skins