My sweetheart is a man's man heiress
Her man must be a carbon copy of Jupiter, her father,
An alpha, a beta, a kappa, an omega male altogether
A carpenter by trade,
The epitome of masculinity
Who could solve any math problem in a second
And knew how to fix everything
A car, electric, plumbing
A family hero, a handy man
Who built houses from the ground up
He could swaddle a baby's nightmare properly
Open doors to the winds of sadness
And pull chairs to the lights of happiness
And he could dress every day to the nines
Infusing in her heiress forever wine 's bouquet
And the love of animals.
So consequently
My sweetheart is an animal 's animal heiress
She eats meat only  if it has a label on it
Saying that animals are not  caged
Or mistreated in anyway.

Underneath a duplex in it's basement a wide assortment of pipes and appliances are mounted everywhere. Some pipes hang from the ceiling disconnected. Holes stuffed with insulation in the concrete foundation. The musician may sit and listen to the sounds of rushing water, boilers and furnaces kicking on and find music in it. The poet may find beauty in the mystery of it all and mention it as a metaphorical line in an upcoming piece
But when the plumber walks down
he sees it for what it truly is. He understands the sounds, the disconnections, the holes left behind by absent appliances, what goes where and why. Inside his mind he sees every movement of every machine, can pick any problem out of sounds and gauges. Imagine having an acute understanding of the world around you and how to work with it. I'm starting to think being a dreamer is more of a coping mechanism than anything.
I'd say I aspire to be a plumber
But I'd just be another poet making another stupid analogy.

Terry and I climb a different hill today,
a narrow trail
weaving among wildflowers
where we search for an old water intake,
finding rusty pipe but no collection box.
Mountain plumbing is constant crisis
as storms re-engineer the landscape
while three hundred houses wait to wash.
Terry, you should know, operated
the water system for years and years
in our old hippie town.

Moving on,
we walk around the former reservoir
that collapsed in the winter of ’82.
Now that was a crisis.
I say I used to come to this hilltop
every day at sunset with my dog
to meet a woman and her dog.
Terry says thirty or forty years ago
he used to come to this hilltop
every solstice to drop acid with his buddies.
“When was the last time you took LSD?” I ask.
“Last week,” Terry says.

Terry, you should know, is seventy-two
with cardiac plumbing that has
weathered a few storms.
He says the trips are milder now, sweeter,
like spring-water from the little glen
on the hill above his cabin,
gurgles out slowly
but worth the wait,
at the end of that trail
only you and I know.

I was three , no bigger than a west Texas tumbleweed . . . just three .

My mother hung the wash out on the line
and wiped the sweat off her brow with her hand .
Half an hour later the clothes were frozen .
Blue Norther . . . you can see them coming
a hundred miles away .
Wichita Falls , Texas . . . on the Wichita river .

Moses sat on a mountaintop gazing at the promised land but it was out of his hands now .
Leaning on his staff , the one that ate the Pharoh's two serpents . . . sssssssilently a single tear falls to the ground .

No fence could hold me . . . I was over or under in seconds .
A terror at three , a potential runaway .
The police knew me by first name  . . . just three .
The plains of North Texas , jackrabbits , coyotes , rattlesnakes and all . . . were home .

Forty years of desert wilderness ,
till the last man , woman , and child of Egyptian connection had died ,
. . . . . . was such a sacrifice made . . . . . .
Moses was the last to fall .
On a mountaintop of no consequences .

      "Run Rabbit Run"

Strange question indeed,
So I asked one and all;
Explain to me:
“What's a plumber's ball?”

Family and friends
Heeded my call,
But none could confine,
Refine or define it,
Yet Paul was sure
He could design it.

Still, none could satisfy
My caterwaul:
“What the hell is a plumber's ball?”

Does it sweat the pipe
Or wiggle the snake:
Can it clamp the ******
For Heaven's sake?
Could it snap on the ****-hole cover?
All these queries
Made me wonder.

Has it something to do
With hardness leakage,
Or ******* the ball-****
To stop a seepage?
Has it anything to do
With a saddle valve dripping,
Electric eels,
Or two pipes mating?
And, I heard of male and female fittings,
And should I worry
If I'm standing or sitting?

If you're discharging the head
Or elongating the pipe,
Does the plumber's ball
Help it snug tight?
Is it in my tank,
Or in my bowl,
Beneath the floor
Near the drainage hole?
Is the plumber's ball
In the back of the truck
(Jeff laughed and said
One could rub it for luck).

I asked Michel
If he could tell,
He sensed it was something
He could smell.
I sought out Ray,
Perhaps he'd know,
But he was on call
To restrain a back-flow.
I couldn't ask Gary
For his wisdom and sense,
He was wigglin' the snake
To unclog a wet vent.
Henry, Rick, Scotty and Brian,
Gave shameless answers
I couldn't rely on.

It's not a crapper, tail piece
Or Johnnie-bolt,
Or catch basin, reamer,
O-ring or pipe dope.
So I searched the Net
With a fool's wonder,
And read of ball-checks,
Gas ***** and plungers.
I know it's too late
To ask Rolly or Ross,
For both of them knew,
And that's our loss.
And Ernie's gone golfing
So I can't ask the Boss.

With final resolve
I fell to my knees,
To pray St. Ferrer
With grace intercede.
His silence left me
In a state of depression;
Had Ferrer washed his hands
Of the plumbing profession?

So nothing could settle
My wherewithal,
I still didn't know,
What's a plumber's ball?

Suddenly, it hit me,
He's never wrong,
The Dalai Lama of dip-tubes,
I'll ask John.
Where others did falter,
John's a rock:
He knows the difference
Between a gas and ball ****.

With a knowing smile
He embraced our Hall:
Here, good friend, is your Plumbers' Ball.