SUBJECT>Re: Dust Bowl Poet at Age 70 POSTER>Si mon EMAIL> DATE>1108415897 IP_ADDRESS>199.184.88.166 PREVIOUS>83398 NEXT> 83416 IMAGE> LINKNAME> LINKURL>

love it -- read it all the way through -- if i were in a less chocolatey mood i might protest the waggity wag of the 6th stanza. but i'm dreaming of my wife in lace and so will let you go, let it all go. still, i really did enjoy it all --

: Mother Mae said Uncle Bill
: wrote an epitaph on the foot
: of my homemade baby bed--
: said it honored an Irish poet
: by the name of William Yeats--
: I was two.

: Mother Mae sent me out to play
: at gallop-horse, ride a tattle-stick
: of hickory with yellow knots
: and kitchen rags for mane and tail--
: I was four.

: Past a grove of cottonwoods,
: canter and lope, our leaps left-off
: high-- unfinished in summer air.

: One day at seventeen I knew,
: all came clear in mizzling rain--
: as William Yeats, I too would die,
: my seventy-third year.

: Uncle's stories aspired life
: to live atop hills, higher than hills
: and mother's songs claimed for me
: a spring to drink, towers to climb.

: The two, in harmony, told
: of Tamburlaines called crippled
: by those who flailed as Cuchulains;
: how men usually end as flot, dabby
: lolly-gags; how red-dirt-poor drink
: blinky milk, find loaves of grit;
: how heaps-o-flys lay their eggs,
: innocence dies and boys drop down
: to eat lives of sand and maggot-pies.

: In evening's rush of winds from Mexico
: tomato, pea and sauerkraut cans bounce
: against a sycamore tree. Oh how we loved
: more the hide than seek--for hide away
: come Maggies who smell of minnows
: and water wells to turn a ragged seat
: in a Model T to a sultan's velvet couch--
: our hands touch Tartar peeks and giggle-
: fuzz, bring syrup inside the cloven peach.

: Yesterday alone I passed by a grave
: atop Ben Bulben Hill-- like William Yeats,
: I have only a thousand days left to fill.

: SBern