Jane and I left Jack Essler’s land office determined, relieved, and grateful for our new sense of direction. We skipped across the street in the rain to the post office, where we found two letters and a small check from Miss Ellen waiting for us. From the postmaster we learned of a boat the blacksmith…
In vehicles that travel only south, We camp from isle to isle and hand to mouth. You South downhill from Ozarks and from Smokies, Cockroach country, greet us Counter-Okies. California ceases at the pier; The sea itself drops off six miles from here. One town with just two things to do. No more. Become a…
How would it be if you took yourself off to a house set well back from a dirt road, with, say, three acres of grass bounded by road, driveway, and vegetable garden? Spring and summer you would mow the field, not down to lawn, but with a bushhog, every six weeks or so, just often…
In 1939, both his parents dead and buried, in the Army Air Corps in basic training, Camel lay on his back and stared up at a wool blanket which hung down from the bunk above his and shaded him from the bright barracks light. As a boy he had lain under the low limbs of…
The only major city, one would hope, Below the level of a periscope. An air so wet, a sewer-damp so ill, One had as well be under water still. The muddy river cakes us, camouflages. Maddened goats, my crew go off in barges. At a distance — I do not refer To feet and inches…
Lo & behold. Yes, peat bogs in Louisiana. The dead stumble home like swamp fog, our lost uncles & granddaddies come back to us almost healed. Knob-fingered & splayfooted, all the has-been men & women rise through nighttime into our slow useless days. Live oak & cypress counting these shapes in a dance human forms…
There is no substitute for mind. You cannot wash it down, or off. It works if you are dumb or blind, Believes enough is not enough. Mind decides and mind reneges, Bares its designs in secret roots; Drinks nothing up, yet leaves the dregs, Tilts back its hat and draws, and shoots. Fingers your navel,…
I can’t pick up the vacuum cleaner without remembering our most subtle and tender moments, shooing the sniper from the playground, then picking watermelons. For the past few months my life has read like canned food labels caked with panic. I don’t know if she’s still in Tokyo or on her way to Zanzibar. I…
The slow light coming on, And sudden wind, dry heat And no dove song. I look up From whatever I have been All night thoughtfully reading, From the dim abstractions That crowd a table at dawn, And I hear my named called — A low, insistent sound — Though no one is here. All night…
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