The above photo was taken by David J. Spear a few years back and part of an exceptional photo series on Butte. It captures the way I feel, the images that speak to me, tell the story of Butte I have in my head: very working-class, well-used, a life of struggle and humor, of tragedy and survival, love and pain and acceptance and escape, a life full of light and dark.
Early next week I’m heading to Butte for several days to write. I will be there as part of the Dear Butte writing residency. I have always wanted to spend some time there alone just to feel it, give it time to percolate. I’ve been there many times for short periods, but not for longer than a few days. And work was involved. My longest stretch in Butte was over 45 years ago. I sided a house with a friend of mine in January. Wind and sunshine below zero, after work unthaw at the Helsinki sauna followed by dinner and drinks at the M & M. I loved it.
This trip will be a chance to focus on a project I’ve worked on for a few years off and on (more off than on). It’s the idea of a memoir littered with poems, and in a way structured or shaped by poems. I have a ton of words but no direction. Kind of like my life has felt while living it. In hindsight it looks like I had a plan, that there was a thread to it. That’s the beauty of hindsight, right? We seem smarter. But a book needs to hold an audience, and I have spent my life writing poems, never attempting a big, organized project.
I have no sense of what I want exactly, no models. I’ve read a few hybrid books of poetry and prose, but they were all different. I’m hoping that this time alone in a small house at the top of the hill in Walkerville will help me find some satisfaction or direction for the book, something that feels right. I also hope to write some new poems there, too. Poems show up when they do, but given the power Butte holds in my heart, I’m guessing one or two will be waiting for me. Maybe one as simple as this: No Warning A month into Spring The barren trees Are beginning to bud. A flock of tiny birds Flitting and chittering, The size of hummingbirds, Dance in the branches. You cannot name them And have given up Collecting things to Forget. Red sky at morning, Sailor . . . take a break. No rain. The wind whistles Whispered dreams of leaves. Mark Gibbons
I remember being at the first Folk Festival and sitting in a folding chair at the intersection of Galena and Main waiting for and Irish band to begin. It was hot, full-on sun and nary a cloud in the sky, and while I waited time rolled back as I imagined my grandparents arriving there less than a century before. A tide of emotion began to fill me up, I struggled not to lose control and remember the tears trickling down the sides of my face, my breathing shallow as I held this strange storm at bay inside me. I regained my composure as the other chairs filled and the sun continued roasting us. Then when the introduction began and the musicians tuned up, the swelling storm returned. I looked up at the buildings around me, the cloudless sky, a bird turning high above, and was transported by the fiddle, fife and drum. I closed my eyes for much of the performance and was joined by my grandparents along with all those Butte American immigrants who came and found a life, an urban life in the middle of a wilderness. I knew then that I had to come back again and spend more time with those ghosts, listen to whatever it was that they had to say to me and try to record it.
The man in this David J. Spear photo reminds me of my grandfather. I love the textures in David’s images, the light. He captures his subjects, and he does it best in black and white, especially in Butte. I hope to find a couple poems as satisfying as this old man smoking. And discover a way to tell a story of my retro-perspective, my revision of my life. It’s all I’ve got to work with.
So I’m off to Butte! I’ll send an update. Here’s a poem for the road, a memory of my old friend Ed Lahey, Butte poet extraordinaire. Peace.
Friendship Ed Lahey was the king of Montana poetry for me, and I really wanted to meet him. So, reluctantly, I made the effort to go introduce myself, intrude upon his privacy. He lived desperately alone. Ed invited me in under the guise of literary kinship, but it was obvious to me he was glad to have some company. I found him to be open and as vain as me, blessed or cursed with the gift of the gab, and I was fascinated by his stories—the booze and Irish heritage, those tales of revolution, drugs, mental hospitals, and loss— breakdowns I felt connected to. The images in his verses, the voices, his hard words—some sort of working class elegance was starkly laid bare, and his deeply resonant baritone invoked the stony mythology of Butte, its immigrant stiffs and worn- down women, their dirty urchins running wild in gangs while the clank and rattle of the industrial age siphoned all from the inside out. The survivors, those tough huddled masses yearning to dance and sing after each shift after shift after shift of drill, blast, muck, and drink, religiously believed in Lady Liberty—their inalienable right to breathe free. Ed Lahey embodied that for me, and I recognized my father inside him, shouldn't have been surprised they were born on the same day in Butte, twenty years apart, two Cancers I'll take to the grave. Ed and I began visiting regularly at his apartment usually over beer or coffee. I know he looked forward to those dates, the companionship, something to do outside his head. He told me so. Ed was honest with me, but some days his mind wouldn't play with his heart. We tried to do what friends do, stay true to it, the relationship, that Tuesdays with Morrie story, and we did, up until the end. Those last few years in the nursing home were no fun for anyone as many of you know from your own time spent signing in on death row. Still, showing up is an honorably conflicted love that rarely gets romanticized. We know the poems, like us, will eventually disappear, dissolve to dust. The value we place on fame or acclaim, our desire to be read and respected for our tales of sense and sensibility, won't survive (most likely much longer than us) embossed with our names on some post- digital shelf. This life, this waking awareness we are, knows only itself, so we get to decide what matters to us. Today I think not of words, poems or books, those paper trails we leave behind. What's been the best for me are the ephemeral moments, the laughter and silence, conversations and contemplations, our devotion to being here whenever we can, watching the sunset glow and fade, our shadows absorbing dark. Mark Gibbons
David J. Speare photograph
Give me my pick, give me my shovel, I'll set the charge if you pay me double.
Tip a few for me and a toast to Ed Lahey.
Thanks Mark, I have a soft spot in my heart for Butte despite what we were told about it growing up in Great Falls. A place where they wave the Irish flag and sing drinking songs with tears in their eyes. Sometime I'll have to tell you about my nearly blind History of Montana Architecture teacher from Butte. This is a time for going to the places of our family history. I look forward to hearing what you discover in Walkerville.