On any temporary sunny day in the valley, none of us had much
money, but my friends complained about the cheap beer I bought,
the Lucky Lager, the Old Milwaukee, the PBR,
yet still I filled the rusted fridge with cans and brown bottles.

“Life’s too short for cheap beer,” one gazing into the lightless chill
would growl, but we knew better and cracked another.
The sun was going down, and we knew that too.

From the street’s dead end, slumped on the couch, tired
after long afternoons restoring the decrepit boat, we watched trains
pass and deciphered riddles in bottle caps we twisted free
with empty hands and our ready, useless strength.

Nobody loved my car, either, a used Plymouth Champ
of babysplat brown graced with a sporty black stripe and an engine
that ran and ran and ran. My mother gave me,

gave me, that car, as she gave me the life I was happily wasting.
She knew I had no wheels and thought I might eventually
need to get somewhere. My friends often found my car—
with inexplicably pulsing combustion in a cadence like breathing,

and lacking cool or charm—useful in an emergency, for a task,
a chore. Or sometimes the car was amusing, as on the morning,
after driving one of us downtown for court, I stopped

at a traffic light beside a police car. The Champ,
panting at the pause, suddenly sounded its horn, announcing,
in a way I never could, Hey, I’m here! When the cop, inscrutable
behind dark lenses, turned to me, I raised my hands

in the universal gesture of I have no idea. His badge glinted
as he chuckled. The light turned, and, shaking his head, the law
drove on into another life, and, with a sigh of relief, so did I.

On long evenings, our dogs slept at our feet, and the boat gleamed,
pale beneath a tree someone had planted decades ago for future shade.
Keel to the stars, raised on sawhorses, the hull was sanded, ready
for paint, misadventure, and the Sacramento. Like all men

of no particular use, looking for work and finding only jobs,
we told stories at dusk, sitting on the couch, the porch,

the steps, laughing as loudly and often as the tale demanded.
Life, we decided, was good—or, at least, remarkably better
than the alternative. There was, after all, the river,
and a boat to restore and someday launch onto the muddy flow.

So we spent our days and dollars together, and no matter what else,
there was always beer to drink and always a car
to borrow or a ride to a place we needed to go.