Hill Country
We used to play with knives when we were little.
We learned to throw them so they’d stick in trees.
Every boy older than eight had his bone-handled Buck
or something like one, sharpened on a flat
piece of rock a boy would keep near by.
We fought with wooden swords, and kept the knives
for bears; or for saplings we sharpened into spears
to throw at fish or frogs. I hit a crow
floating along the river on a log
and the spear went down his throat and pinned him
to the bark until the log rolled and he drowned.
I always said he drowned. And said my prayers
but still grew up and ravens dogged my days
and crows encouraged my running – barking shins
and at the moon and moving to the coast
that looked like rocks a boy would keep near by.
**
Summer Job
Were you the one who was watching
me a cutting weeds
down behind the high school
along the county road
where the sweat hot smell of blacktop
was all that cut the dust
that the passing pickups tore up
in their summer drag strip races
on their ways off to the drive-in
where there might have been a movie
but no one ever watched one
and no one ever came alone?
**
Train Sights
The music of The South, the passing flowers.
The strong big girl who strains her weak blue eyes.
Cheap and cheerful jewelry spells her name
in plated gold stamped to a thin gold chain.
The man across who’s reading the same story
frowns through the baby fat that hogs his face.
I channel saxophones inside my head.
Unwanted riffs ride out and in on smoke
that smears my last imagination panes.
The sun’s been up for hours
but it doesn’t bring much light.
The sun’s been up for hours
but it doesn’t bring much light.
These people in commuter cars
think they will carry on
They do not know the fat man thinks
the Lord gave him his gun.
They hang their coats and parcels up
and the train resumes its run.
**
O’s Way to Bubba’s Heart
(“I shall th’effect of this good lesson keep / As watchman to my heart.” Ophelia, in Shakespeare’s HAMLET, to her brother “Bubba” who was christened as Polonius)
Ophelia loves her wild odontoglossum
and tells her chillun that its toothy grin
enhances collard greens and the roast possum
adorning Bubba’s tie and triple chins.
“I’ll swan,” she vamps, “I surely love a blossom
and he’ll eat what I serve him, sure as sin.”
Ole Bubba belches, goes out in the yard
to throw some horseshoes, tell his friends life’s hard.
It sure is hard for Horace, that’s the pony
who wears the shoes that Bubba aims to throw.
Ophelia fears the two will break her yoni
that she acquired on travels long ago
so she calls old Bubba back for some spumoni
she has laced with bacon fat to make him grow.
While Horace grazes odes till he has fits
Ole Bubba gets outside some glaze-fried grits.
