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Lessons in Living From Those With Nothing
We should all envy these trashcan lives
the wind blows hard tonight
and it’s a cold wind
and I think about
the boys on the row.
I hope some of them have a bottle of
red.
- Charles Bukowski, Trashcan Lives
The boys are out on the row
A girl, too. In the shade cast by the port office, she throws back her head, laughing at something the man sitting beside her said through his tangled beard, from under his grimy baseball cap.
Her teeth. Few and far between. Her hair. Long and loose and shining greasily, hanging in thin neglected strands over sunburned shoulders.
She and the man in the hat each have a can of beer, that 8.5% stuff no one drinks for the taste. The other two men, skin darkened by near-constant sun, don’t. They sit on the bench in the bright light where the shadows don’t reach, waiting their turn.
The boats rocked gently, only an idea of wind pushing halfheartedly at their masts. Ropes hang motionless as hangman’s nooses. Here and there, on curving hulls, tiny wavelets cast a coruscating reflection of a sun too hot to look at.
