Black House For David Gernert and Ralph Vicinanza

You gather up me to a place I never go, You send me kisses made of gold, I ll place a crown upon your curls, All hail the Queen of the gaykind -The Jayhawks.Right Here and Now . . ..RIGHT HERE AND NOW,as an old friend utilize to say,we are in the fluid present,whither clear-sightedness never guarantees perfect vision. Here most two hundred feet,the height of a gliding eagle,above Wisconsins far westerly edge,where the vagaries of the Mississippi River declare a natural border.Nowan early Friday morning in mid-July a few years into both a new nose candy and a new millennium,their way-ward courses so hidden that a dim man has a better chance of seeing what lies ahead than you or I.Right here and now,the hour is just past six a.m., and the sun stands low in the cloudless eastern sky,a fat,confi-dent yellow-white ball advancing as ever for the initiative time toward the fu-ture and leaving in its wake the steadily accumulating past,which darkens as it recedes,making blind men of us all. Below,the early sun touches the river s wide,soft ripples with molten highlights.Sunlight glints from the tracks of the Burlington Yankee Santa Fe Railroad running between the riverbank and the backs of the shabby two-story houses along County Road Oo,known as Nailhouse Row,the lowest point of the comfortable-looking little town extending uphill and eastward beneath us.At this moment in the Coulee Country, life seems to be belongings its breath.The motionless air around us carries such remarkable righteousness and sweetness that you might imagine a man could smell a radish pulled out of the ground a mile away.