Yellow
From
all I knew
towards
everything I know: the town,
the
beer joints
by
the Court House, and behind it
in
the shade of hack-branch pine, jailbirds
on
ice, for knife fights or a drunken grudge.
On
Water Street, unchanged since Lincoln,
the
cobbles jarred feed-sacks
from
the wagons, in the road, clumps of seed grain stained
with
plug-tobacco spit.
I loafed
under awnings,
watching
the farmers, their heavy wives, dolt boys in tow,
or,
where gene-pools startled to a depth and cleared, daughters
of
a brief and incandescent beauty.
Setting-out
was half the journey, from the railhead,
mile-long
trains trailing north into Ohio, east to Carolina;
in
my pocket the pencilled notes
of
stone-melt heat in August − the look
the
South takes
when
it no longer cares who sees.
Mother’s
friend, Mrs Carlisle, had a radio show,
Kitty’s Talk of the Town, snugged
between
Best Country Tunes and Farming Today, and asked me
would
I read a poem ‘or maybe two…’
Come
the day, I was late, just made the cue
with
a wither-look from ‘Kitty’, though she and Mother never knew
I
lost the time on Water Street,
polishing
my style:
near
the feed store, her kin
loading
up, Sweet Sixteen staring hard, hard
to
make me see
the
way she smoothed first one hand
past
her dip of waist, then with the other wiped
a
sweat bead slow along her throat,
deep
into the damp, loose yellow of her dress.
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