Only the stones
know my name.
The back of our family’s
King James
forgot my birthday
but still keeps a blank space
for my death date.
Sleep a strong wind
that once let me drift—
now, airless nights
strand me
in my battered boat.
Fiddle without a bow.
Pawnshop guitar.
My mouth a harp,
heart a harmonica
in coat pockets so thin
the wind
is my accompanist.
Sleep, I sing.
Forget weeping.
Watching the good trains
go by—Washington
& Dominion, Santa Fe —
I think of jumping a boxcar
wherever stays cooler
than this here dirt
red
as a wound, or the bottom
of the pot boiling
the cure-red
as a child’s backside
whupped till he cries
& then’s switched
silent again.
A torn tom-tom.
Banjo without strings.
Keep me, I sing.
Forgive leaving.
Only the stones
call me home.
ISSUE: Winter 2004