Bucky's

It was cold this morning; only forty degrees, but with thick fog driving the cold through my gloves, biting my hands.  The fog dissipated, suddenly, just before eleven o’clock.  I drilled holes into the concrete ceiling of the third floor, then hammered anchors into the holes.  At the same time, I watched the sun break out and pour down on the concrete below me.  Soon there will be walls to keep the sun out, windows to let it in.  It will be colder then. 

Against the bright blue sky, I watched two bathrooms sail slowly past, lit up by the new sunlight.  I wondered; how many women have to search for the bathroom at their workplace not once, on their first day of work, but again and again as it moves about from one place to another?  I always smile at the sight of portable toilets, suspended from a 15-storey tower-crane, swooping through the air at the end of their rigging.  It makes me happy.  There is something silly about the whole thing. 

We call them Bucky’s, whether or not they were manufactured by Bucky’s Portable Toilets.  It’s a nicer name than portajohn, or portable toilet, or toilet; not as ridiculous as “bathroom”—it's a four-by-four plastic enclosure overtop a sewage holding tank. 

Here are my protocols.  I open the door and check for toilet-paper—the men often don’t use any, so the fact that a man just stepped out of it doesn’t mean that it’s okay to use.  I step in, close the door behind me, open the lid to check the seat, then close it again.  There are often little things in my pockets that I’ve forgotten about, and I don’t want to be one of the many construction workers who have lost tools into the tank as they sat down.  Or worse; one of the few construction workers who’ve lost and then found their tools.  All I can say is, it would have to be very, very expensive before I’d even dream of going fishing for it. 

I try not to look at the floor; men miss.  I lower my pants below the level of the toilet seat, then open the lid.  As I sit down, I’m struck by the irrational fear that the Bucky is hooked up to a crane at this very moment, and at any moment I’ll go flying through the air with a bucket of humin waste swishing beneath my naked hind end.  I finish up, stand up, close the lid behind me, and only then pull up my pants, and possibly pick up whatever random tool decided to jump out of my pockets despite my precautions. 

It’s more complicated in winter, especially when I’m in overalls and have to take my coat off.  Soon, drifts of snow will creep in through the seams of the door and the plastic roof, and out muddy boots will turn it into a brown slush.  Occasionally the blue-juice septic fluid will freeze, and the men’s urinal will be filled with rock-salt to keep it from closing up entirely.  It’s not intimidating to use the Bucky in the cold, if you’re wondering; cold is omnipresent and for some reason I feel colder if I have to pee. 

There is alcohol spray mounted on the wall, which they may or may not have refilled.  I squirt three times into my hands, then step out and slather it around until it dries or freezes to my skin.  Better still are the  wet-wipes in my lunch-box.  I also keep a spare shoelace, the small women’s earplugs I have to buy special, knuckle-bandaids, and antibiotic ointment.  There’s always something after my hands; nails imbedded in the ceiling that make sneak-attacks, slices from sheet-metal, and an occasional smashed finger as I pound in a drop-in bolt-anchor.  Each injury will find some way to get infected unless I treat immediately, then cover with duct-tape to keep the bandaids on through the rest of the workday. 

I finish the day with concrete dust in my hair, in my nostrils, and sprinkled liberally across my shoulders, shins, and boot-tops.  There’s a black, steely grease on my gloves, or my hands if I’ve been unwise enough to take the gloves off—ground into the cuts and calluses, lined deep beneath my fingernails, impossible to get out.  My doctor keeps a cautious eye on my tetanus shots; germs from the Bucky seem the least of the grime.  The only remedy is the hot shower at home. 

I see a brand-new Bucky sailing by, dark green, no dirt on the outside.  They drop it close by; just past the mobile crane, around the stack of rebar and the short C-can, facing the dirt road.  It’s the little things in life; when I turn the corner and reach to open the door, I see the placard on the front that says “Women.”  Hurrah!  It’s my very own Bucky. 

Who Made Me god?

Who was I to tell you—you can’t dance, little girl, you’re no good?

Who was I to tell you—you can’t sing, little girl, you’re no good?

Who was I to tell you—you can’t play, little girl, you’re not strong enough you’re not fast enough, be dainty, be pretty, you’re no good?

When did they make me god?

Who was I to say, little boy, that you can’t climb, sit down, don’t talk, be good?

Who was I to say, little boy, be good, be good, be good?

When being good means eating everything you are, put it in the lunchbox with your sandwich, locked in the closet until recess.

Who was I to say, play sports, don’t cry, stand up straight, have a strong hand? 

When did they make me god, that I can tell you what a man is? 

I am the teacher, I am god

I am the mother, I am god

I am the father, I am god

I am the man in the suit, I am the man in the football uniform, I am the man in the police uniform, I am god. 

Go dance.  Go sing.  Go climb.  Say fuck, damn, and hell.  Cry.  Throw things.  Yell.  Play in the rain.  Work hard.  Being you. 

Go be god.  

(I object to the capitalization of the word "god."  There have been many gods to all the many peoples of the world, for one thing, and for another, the very act of capitalizing the word "god" imposes a mental pause in the mind that enforces the subordination of the humin spirit to some external, Other, Patriarchal, Male being.  I think we are more powerful when we view ourselves as responsible for the course of our lives and the quality of our own character, rather than leaving it up to some external force, especialy one who seems so inclined to judge us arbitrarily for our efforts.) 

Urban Rain-Dance

I will
leave the car windows down
forget my library book on the picnic table
leave my laundry on the line
make elaborate chalk-art on the sidewalk
and water the entire lawn:
then it will rain. 

I am One

Do not come with me, for I'm dancing
splashing in puddles
rolling in riddles of rain
laughing, on my back in the middle of the street
mouth wide open as the water pours in

Do not come with me, for I'm running
with my feet on cool concrete
in the silence that is night, alone
in starlight, eyes wide, searching
for falling stars, for birds flying, for me

Come with me, for I'm singing
with birds, in the green, by the trout-stream
by the lake, in the sunlight,
beneath the tall trees
in the high summer days 

Come with me, for I'm laughing
with you, with your deep eyes,
with your bright smile, with your light heart
laying in the thick grass, staring at the sky
I am one, and you are one.

Ice

(It's because my eyes are new)

Every color is hiding in the sky, night crawling overhead toward the west
Ice below speaks in a language of color, texture, sound,
telling if it is safe, or not, or
a thrill, in-between. 

These are my people now,
bundled up against the cold, immune
children holding to their parents, and the other way around
bladed ice-skates like tennis-shoes of summer, racing over grass--
no fear

The skyline of the city from the other shore,
lights emerge one-by-one, like Jupiter overhead
orange, blue, purple, crimson-touched trails of cloud
I wish you were here, with your eye, your warm heart.

Beside the vast lake, another people speak in dissonant voices,
flying overhead, approaching me to see if I have food; I disappoint. 
Sit; listen, roar, scrape, wind whistling in my ears,
the flap of wings leaving water, voices of geese, a snap--
Drifts of snow, crisp, waves of wind carved,
snap--lines cut across the drift, zig-zag outward, broken
A rock peers above the waterline from beneath a frozen hat

It is because my eyes are new that I get lost
alone--snap--
in the colors in the sky, heading west,
the way the ice glows, like prism, a sheet of gold,
touched by shards of crimson, waves of orange
I wish you were here, with your eye, your warm heart
bundled against the cold; no fear.

~Kathlean Wolf
12 February 2012




Tonight was the first time, in the four winters I have experienced in Wisconsin, that I've gone down to the lakeshore in winter and watched a sunset over the ice.  I was awestruck by the way the sky caused the ice to glow with a thousand colors, and also melancholy at not being able to share it with someone I care about. 

Guard Your Position

Even though this poem looks like musings on painful things, it was written in the spirit of moving on.  I found myself at a turning point: 

Do I let all of those old memories, habits, negative things I was taught, hang on to me?  Do I let them calcify in my soul until I'm frozen in cynicism and defeat, like the people with the bone-forming disease?  Or do I carefully arrange my soul in a position where good things are always welcome?  If I inevitably grow stiff with age, can I possibly stiffen with my arms wide open to happiness?  I'm not sure how I might change the poem, except to add this preface, and to note that I have, in the time since I wrote this, become very open to joy. 


In the small bedroom of my childhood, my books and teddy bears protected me from the emptiness of the house.  Outside, a dark and lonely night, my bedroom door is shut like magical iron. 

Guard your position. 

School, a place of learning, what it is to stand up at the top of the tower where all the children long to be, King of All.  The boy I displaced is angry, waits after the recess-bell to throw a ball of mud at my new shirt as punishment.  Humiliation of his fragile ego, worthy of violent rage.  In my world, this is Male : Female.  I should have stayed on the tower, let a teacher sort it out, but I had reason to believe I was invisible. 

Guard your position. 

There is a disease where the body takes every injury as a prompt to lay down bone.  Every bruised muscle fills with calcium and sets where it lays, position contorted or denied; body a prison, a sculpture of the positions each limb took before they were entombed.  If you must live, it would be wise to choose the way your new bones set up.

Guard your position. 

I am not at the midpoint of a lengthy life, but near.  There are choices to make.  I always thought—promised myself—that I would be fearless, that I would not become embittered, cynical, defeated.  I told myself that, before I believed in the existence of fear, and cynicism, and defeat. 

Guard your position. 

I see the way others live their lives, where they have arrived, twenty years from now.  There are choices to make.  If I must live, it is wise to choose the way my heart sets up. Not lay down at night in fear, wake with fear encrusted like misplaced bone.  Keep moving, keep moving, but if I stop, be sure to stop where joy is, and hope, and willingness to love.
Guard your position.  

When the Revolution Begins, 2010

When the Revolution begins, will you get up out of your chair

from in front of your TV, leave your nice warm living-room

and take to the streets, in one angry riot, deserved in every way

by the ones who own us all? 

Do we remember how to be angry now?  Is it all movie-violence

accompanied by buttered popcorn,

worlds in a fantasy, distractions from the pain of real life;

or do we remember how to stand

with the flag clutched in our fists, ripped back with all our might

from the ones who have waved it in our faces for so long

telling us that it stood for something

as they stomped--jumped on it like children playing a game,

making their point--do we remember how to be angry?

Have no Fear of the Revolution

or that it will not come. 

It will come.  When your television has shown you enough lies

when your armchair is tattered, but you've learned

that the cold of your living room is more important than looks

heat turned off for want of money. 

Then we hold our Revolution.  Then we go after money and power;

riot on the streets.  Then the police come, arrest us all

We go to prison for our beliefs. 

When all the poor are locked up there, we have our Equality

There will be none but the thieves of our country,

the ones who act like they own us

to pay for our food, and warm beds, and our health care. 

And so we win at last. 

December 2010

Two months after this poem was written, students from nearby East High School walked past my bedroom window, headed for the Wisconsin State Capitol.  I took the bus to beat them to the top of the hill and took video on my cell-phone.  Like thousands of others, I spread the word of our peaceful, powerful protests by way of Facebook and YouTube.  We spent the rest of the day watching and waiting to see if an ALEC-authored bill pushed through by the new governor, Scott Walker, would be passed by the State Senate.  I cheered alongside my fellow Wisconsinites when we discovered that our brave Democratic Senators had left the state in order to prevent a vote before the People had a chance to learn about the bill and express their opinions.  The protests in Madison were the largest the nation has seen in over a decade, with a crowd of nearly 200,000 in the middle of March.  While under-reported, misrepresented, and suppressed by the mainstream media, the events that occurred right outside my own door touched off a national firestorm of protests against other corporate-protectionist, ALEC-authored bills being pushed on an unknowing public throughout the nation.