August
Winds came arguing
convincingly
against the
stubborn
lingering of a
lagging
August; walls of
rain
raced in fierce
squalls and torrents
taking roof-tops,
stately
old trees, homes
and
fabulous autos,
newly
owned, until
neighbors, unused to
speaking, leaned
over
fences in order to
ask
or to offer their
names.
Father
The day the phone-call came
to announce you were dead
I hung up and walked out
the door, across the small
space meant to be a sweet-
potato field that had failed
in the drought, but prospered
with grass hogs could have
as they foraged with each
escape from that flimsy,
patched-up pen, on to that
old, tilted barn I helped you
build when I was a boy,
when you made me swear
I would never drink whiskey
I watched you swallow as
you spoke, as if it were a
sword, or a blaze of fire
that slid down your thick,
quaking black throat. Well,
I guess these deep gulps of
year-old cider from my own
hand-made crock don't count,
while I sit on a bench of a
knotted-pine plank
balanced on blocks___
Salt burns my eyes, too sensi-
tive to the setting sun, while
this hurt I have is bitter-sweet,
this knowing you have been
released from an illness
that held you in slumber
too long, when you would
have preferred to be out there,
somewhere, an unmanageable
man, untamed, arguing against
the defiance of nature; now
everyone knows who won.
Like This
I am as awkward
as this morning's pull
on the moon, mid-June;
I had almost forgotten
days like these, when
rain falls a whole week
without cease, monsoon-like
at the advent of another
hurricane season; hot
is a mild word for this
clammy, altered climate.
The fullness of my fifty-one years,
measured in money wouldn't be
enough to close-out any of my
bills. So, here I sit, over half a
hundred, and am hardly a fold
in the ring that tells the age
of a tree, like a sycamore, or
honor oak, who could easily
live to see a whole, new century.
When young, I thought ninety-
something would be nice; but
now, I don't know. It occurs
to me as I watch this weather
from my window, those thick
dark clouds may never permit
the sun's gold again. Still, it
is good to be here like this,
listening to a conference
of cicadas, crickets; as
the pond frogs fret, it seems
that the lake's last residential
loon has left, or has no further
reason to add its sadness
to all those other songs.
Old Cahawba
South, west of Selma
off Highway-22,
on a slab of stone
the name is carved:
Old Cahawba, The First
Capital of Alabama,
and fifty-yards,
maybe more,
at the confluence
of the Alabama river
and the Cahawba river
is a solid plank of iron,
an auction block,
not worn by water,
undefiled by lichen
and time. I
am certain: It
was built
to last,
forever.
Without Words
Without words, I understood
what the oboe was saying, each
note was enough; all that ache
through hollowed wood whose
twinned reed too easily splits
under pressure, so much, the player
has to marginalize the meaning in his
music, in the likeness of a poet.
And, in the movie, any movie
where there is sadness where
the story stops, I come away mostly
knowing the fate of the forlorn
lovers, over is over, the same
in any language, or any country.
Then, there comes that high-
pitched violin, vying for its portion
of my pliancy, locked away,
though not for long, in a vast
region of the heart's realm, ruled
by nuances as never before, that
causes the coursing blood to bolt
as a light toward a deer's last leer.
Willie James King has published Wooden Windows with a foreward by Yusef Komunyakaa.
He has studied with Robert Polito, who directs the
writing courses at the New School, New York.
Email: Willie James King
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