WatchingSeasons

The hole in his Levi's floated like a cloud,
pushing his finger in shrinking circles
round the knotted, bluish flesh
of many falls before, in the shouts
of defeat and future fear.

The egg was a talisman that wrapped
his Momma curled like the planks
of the ghost gray shack, warped
and bending ends to the sun,
calling it the day's wage.

His father's blunt fingers, dyed in earth,
would curl to rigid spades
that trembled in the knowledge
that work was an illusion borne
of empty bellies open.

Nickel days brought a can of brown beans
to the dusty table ringed
with old coffee ground water stains
and candle leavings in shallow
light of sundown promise.

His patched mattress musk breathed
bites of green grass and shining glass,
and a sleek horse in a rainbow
meadow, fat with grain
and liquid foreign smiles.

Tomorrow was the secret true redemption,
fresh with a dreaming tablet all inked
and crinkled with wishing sweat.
He would watch her stare
at spider crystal bridges.

Sawhorses gripped a dark portal fish boat
skeleton abandoned to cresting ambition
in the fields that traveled images with
the watching seasons in the dust
of the bundled truck.

Apples and peaches sucked out the life
on ladders of rusted steel bearing
the weariness and broken tirades
that visited the fleeting squat
of listless home ground.

He squinted magic in the creek waters,
rushing with tales of pirates
and princes with bulging sacks
of gold to bring a kiss to cheek,
even in the quiet times.

The wind ruffled his tangled curls,
whispering like the sucking mud
at his feet, that there was no direction
safe enough to lead away, away.
He would have to stay.

� 2000 DPMcClellan