24/02/2024
THE NIGHT I MET CHUCK MOULTON
Stephen Barile
Fresno, California, United States
“A grizzly bear with bad teeth who rode a motorcycle.”
~Jon Veinberg
Well after dark, the sky was brighter
Against the shadows in the woods.
We stood around staring into the fire,
Drinking beer from aluminum cans
Dave kept cool in the creek nearby.
We took turns walking down there,
Retrieving a couple of cold ones.
Dave wanted to see if Chuck, the poet,
His friend from the Tower District
Was camping up here, near the road.
We walked in a mysterious night.
The mountain stars lit our path
In the Ponderosa and Cedar forest
Fixed and motionless in the dark.
We passed the first of flat ground,
A stand of trees, a water spigot,
And a Forest Service outhouse.
We walked downhill on the dirt road
Near the fringe of a meadow of sedges.
The second flat, and burnt-earth area
Where migrating Indigenous people
Had campfires over the centuries
Traversing the Sierra to trade.
Near the horse corral, and third flat,
In the dark background of trees,
A Promethean bonfire lit the blackness.
A holy fire, purifying and wrathful.
A pile of wood to feed the craving.
The silhouette of a European motorcycle,
Somebody was leaning against it.
As we got closer, Dave yelled out.
Chuck jumped up and acknowledged us.
His loud, low, and menacing gruff voice.
Great big, with a long bushy moustache,
Coke-bottle glasses mirrored the flames
While he drank whiskey from a metal cup.
His motorcycle reflected the flames
From the chrome exhaust-pipe.
Three of us stood before his campfire,
When he was the first to speak:
“Hell is full of fire,” he said,
As if he had firsthand familiarity.
“In Dante’s Inferno, Hell is icy cold,
Saved for the worst sinners.”
We declined several offers to share
The whiskey he called “hooch.”
And he told us firefighting stories,
Of great conflagration in the woods.
Heroic struggles to fight flames
With a chain-saw, shovel and Pulaski.
“Indigenous people used wildland fire,
Naturally caused or otherwise,
To encourage growth in oak trees,
To increase their food supply of acorns.”
