Thursday, July 24, 2008

WTF???

This is some of the best stuff I've ever read. That includes Whitman, Carroll, Yeats, ect. I don't know where this chick's been hiding, but if you like this poem just read the rest at her blog. Is something cooking, because I smell Robert Frost?

Mobile, Alabama: 1960s

He casts the line down toward the green-gray chops of bay,
lets it waft along by the cement pillars of the causeway,
few enough station wagons and Chevys passing
that he can tip a slow straw hat nod at each one
before resuming his watch of the steel sky,
the States sky, so unlike the sky
on the other side of the world--
when something roars through here
it's a passenger flight.
He leans against the sun-fired guard rail,
looks down at the lapping currents
where they slap the pillars from all sides,
unsure where they're going.
He slides open his ice chest and waits
for the tautening of the swaying line.

In the tired sunset heat,
Angie and Charlotte let the screen door clatter behind them,
feet rushing through the soft cold grass
to where the Silverado crunches to a halt,
and he lifts the bucket from the cab. He grins
when they peer in at the wide eyes
and some silver sides still heaving,
knowing this is all they'll ever know,
as close as they'll ever come.
Just as quick the moment spirals off
and they straddle pink bikes one more time before supper.
He clunks the bucket onto the table he hammered together in the back yard
and unpockets the knife that saw Korea,
straw hatbrim casting shadows across his work:
slicing each ragged tendon, all the flesh so precisely
that even as a teenager, Angie will claim her daddy
catches the fish that have no bones.
Hands slick he works them out,
separating deft piles
of wanted and unwanted
in the drowsy, steel heat of Mobile.

By Haley

2 comments:

Snotty McSnotterson said...

Thanks for the comment--like your blog name :)

shaikens said...

Oh snap, son. That is some good reading. I can smell the frost now... I can smell it.