Sunday, January 24, 2016

His Poems


The way
he flicked gently
open his late
Grandfather's
chunky Zippo-

its finish worn
and polished
by the fine
Delta dirt
and overall
pocket
of a man
who climbed
daily
on and off
a red Farmall
tractor-

the way he
drew deeply
on the hand
fashioned
cigarette,
breathing
out a great cloud
then still
allowing the last
slender bit
of smoke to
escape gently
from his nostrils.

It was
the way he
dropped his chin
and pushed back
his hair
up and straight out
and gave a
well rehearsed
cutting up of his eyes
the way a
boy might
when he first
wooed his
mother.

The women that
he had been with,

the drugs
and the booze,
and prisons
and jails,

and
the women-

this last one
most of all.

This was
the tragedy
he wrote.

These were
his poems.

His work,
then,
that of recorder
of the
melancholy
life
he had created.