The Big Wheel Amid the eddies of evening dust He stands, his greying hand on his heart He says, "I take as my consolation That I won't see it fall apart." The wind rises, and in the gathering dust, He ascends, the day conveyed Into night as by sleight of hand. Where you stand Dark-skinned children turned teeth from the loam And beat time on bones when they danced. We know iron for hammered stone That, coaxed by fire to steel, warm and worn, Clatters in the track and the trestle Of the elevated train Like marbles down lighthouse stairs. By ordination in stone at such a height, By the scrape of such desperate claws, On these ledges strung with frayed clothesline Cats rouse themselves As fear with his drum stumbles near. The wreckage of trees that posed Unwitting haven to sagging wings, Splintered in a blast-relay squawking, Ring the slumped and sleeping birds. Saplings crushed by their slow flesh, They struggle with dreams of The wingless angel worm And we fly charcoal flares in the sun Or in palm tree shadows shifting in his rum Our man learns of his fugitive cockatoo's return.