Gee, I like this poem. Me and Gary Soto, we go back. I've read stuff of his before and worried for a minute he might be tempted to become an ethnic spokesmodel or something but this is way beyond that, the best thing by him I've read. He's from my neighborhood, I mean I know the valley, we drove from Calaveras County to visit my dad's mother in San Francisco or my mom's in Mendocino County, where my mom grew up on a ranch.

This poem runs straight and true as the Main Line from Redding to San Bernardino. The deep snow rules out that location. Mr. Soto is not in a jolly mood here, I see. He tells us he's travelling. When he gets where he's going relatives will ask "Where are you these days, Gary?" I can't tell you if that's a regionalism but my folks talk like that. He tells us about the train he's on, the world, then his wish that he could live in this world, his dream of what a world he could live in would be, from glimpses. That world would have a past, and therefore a future. But this is my country, only the present. Then he talks about his life in the world, in this country. Is there a future here for him, for anyone? This is a political poem.

I do not know what the coal is, icy to red. I'm not sure that nostalgia is the cigarette lighter from before the war and that beauty is the tears that flow inward to feed the roots of that nostalgia. I'm glad Gary Soto wrote this poem and I'm glad I read it.