Eventually the venturesome
Have miles of days to gad about.
In our peculiar minds, the year
Is like a landscape, and our days
A journey through geography.
Into December, peaks uprear
On Calendar’s topography.
But January’s all plateau.
They stand and look behind them, down
Upon the slopes they steeply scaled:
A rugged trail where gaps still show,
A path less traveled than travailed.
Ahead of them the view’s obscure,
The valley’s hung with fog and mist.
And yet it leaves them unafraid.
They’re comforted by being sure
That all the path is slow downgrade.
Idyll
Days are becoming longer but are still all too suddenly short.
The full night drops in before supper; they eat in half-dark,
And then have long hours to pass in some new game or sport.
My poetry’s not enough to entertain them much, they remark.
I suggest that they put to use one of Flossie’s oldest skills:
I remember how in the old days, hour upon evening hour,
She kept the children spellbound and breathless with scary tales:
Of spooks and ha’nts and specters white as flour.
It’s marvelous enough that this young pair has had such travels,
Their idylls, treks and outings, north and south.
But how wondrous: they can listen as a long tale unravels,
A ghost story which comes right out of the horse’s mouth.
Warming Up
Night after unearthly night,
She runs her repertoire:
The Cemetery War,
The Feud of Ancient Dead,
And How the Spirits Fight;
The Skeleton in Tree,
The Pool of Flaming Hair,
And Shades of Yesternight;
The Dog Without a Head,
The Spectral Jamboree,
And The Spotted Booger Mare,
The Critters of the Wild;
The Crying Baby Born
To Feebleminded Child;
The Succubus in Corn
Who Primes the Virgin Lad,
And What the Hermit Said,
And Many, Many More.
Each night, until their bed,
She told them all she knew.
And then she winked at me
(I think she winked, but he
Didn’t notice). Anyway:
“Now listen, younguns, while
I git this tale acrost!
A tellin-story old,
The Tale of Dan Montrost.”
The Ghost’s Song
and Other Poems
* * *
I
* * *
Contents
“Sticks-out-of-sack!” she intoned, her incantation
Beginning each new sequence.
They thought such conjuration some witchery, but it was only
A self-charm, a private joke.
These magic wands,
Sticks in a sack, knapsack
I’d packed around with me,
Just to have something to fill it.
Her knuckle-knobbed hands snapped the first stick.
Their ears if not their eyes perceived it.
Or was it just the crackling fire?
Dry, its pop splintered into kindling.
Now that stick, she commenced, were the carpinter.
And pinter! pinter! pinter! faded down the hall.
No use much fer carpinters hereabouts.
Sawyers, maybe. There wudn’t nary bitty need
Fer a carpinter.
Is how come I bustid that’un.
Then she fetched from the sack a second.
Still-Hunt
This’un hyur now, she said of the second stick, this’un’s
His rifle-gun. Crackerjack stick-out-of-sack!
Swear to Josh-way, he could crimp the tail of a razorback
At a hunurd yard or more!
Or shoot at a target from a hunurd feet
Six times and not leave but one hole!
How he kept body’n soul on speakin tarms them winter months
Was huntin was this hyur gun, fer squar’l and bar
And other beastes. Come time in the sprang
Fer the shootin-match, shootin fer the beef,
Couldn’t nobody best him ’ceptin Walt Ailing.
And me, I ’spect Dan jist ’lowed Walter top shot
Fer a politeness
Because he was still The Stranger.
Dan’s ways with a shootin-arn was what got
Him mixed up with the blockaders.
I won’t break this stick yet, no.
But bye and bye I’m gonna.
Still-Fire
Third stick’s a puny stave, aint it?
Fit for nought but burnin,
So I’ll chunk it in the far.
Burns puny too, don’t it?
That’un stands fer the far what lit the still,
The still fer bilin corn,
Fer cookin up the blockade brew,
The roastin-ear wine, ole mountain dew.
That’s what Dan got into,
Shining the moon.
The moon on the hemlock screen
Where the still is hid,
And Dan all night on his knees,
Pokin sticks under the biler,
Keeping the far jist rat,
Jist rat.
Still-Life with Stallion
Call this stick, the fourth’un, a hitchin-post.
A sourwood saplin he ties his horse to.
Oh yessiree, he’s got him a horse now.
A stallion black as a crow,
He swapped Mack Ailing twenty gallon for,
Out of his first big run of high wines.
Hear the stallion whinny?
He aint restless, nor hongry.
He jist caint tolerate the smell
Of the sour mash swill, the still-slop.
Cows’n pigs jist plumb crave the stuff
But horses do despise it.
Dan don’t know this yet.
“Henry,” says he (fer that’s the name he give it),
“What’s ailin you, anyhow?”
The stallion’s nostrils quiver.
Strains in the Stillness
Two sticks she fetched together from the sack
And scraped one upon another beneath her chin,
Rolly trudum, trudum, trudum, rolly day!
She sang, stamping her foot.
Rang tang a-whaddle linky day!
Fifth stick and sixth’un, one’n’other,
Make up his fiddle and his bow.
Swapped a gallon to Philo English fer’em.
Sattidy nights he listens to them old-timey fiddlers
And watches their fingers, till he knows by heart
The tunes and timin and fingerin.
Th’other six nights of the week,
Alone at his watch at the still,
Keepin the far, he learns him his fiddle.
Folks tease him about it.
Say he’ll give hisself away.
Stills in the Stereoscope
He give hisself away, he did. I mean that more ways than one.
The seventh stick she held out from her nose, like so,
And said, This hyur contraption, this thingumajig sortathing,
Fergit what he called it, a “Stars-Cup” or somethin.
Anyhow, see, you stick these double photygraphs in hyur,
And then you look through hyur, and it’s real as day!
Makes you think you could walk rat through the pitcher!
Dan swapped a travelin pedlar half a gallon fer it.
And then he took it ’round, and showed us all
Faraway places, some other places, palaces and won
drous cities;
Didn’t nobody even guess there ever was such places.
But now, younguns, stick yore eyes to this thing and I’ll show ye
Pitchers that wasn’t faraway but rat hyur at home.
Distilling the Sticky Installment
Now with that magic viewer,
Showing in three dimensions
Five more sticks, all but the last:
See them fellers in their khaki shirts
A-sneakin up the hill? Them’s gov’ment men.
Long arm of the law.
Our eighth stick hyur’s a long one, that long arm
Comin to raid Dan’s still and git him.
But his horse warned him, and he lit out
Ahead of the law. I hid him.
Me, Flossie Fay Salter, I’m the ninth stick
Tall, thin and ugly stick.
In yan barn I hid him and his horse
Nigh on to two weeks afore the law cooled down.
Now look at this hyur pitcher:
That’s my eldest darter, Frankie
A-fetchin Dan his vittles to the barn.
He got to teasin her and callin her
His “lick-wish stick.” She’s the tenth stick,
Tart as lickwish maybe, not as black.
See this next pitcher, the eleventh stick:
The cob pipe stuck in Swinn Brashear’s mouth.
Never saw him without it. Years later,
Atter Frankie wedded up with him, she used to tell
As how he often wore his pipe to bed.
But Swinn, he was a goodern, and come to be
Dan’s bestest friend, him who nearly stole his gal,
His Frankie, my Frankie.
They fought, Dan and Swinn. Dan won the fight,
But Swinn won Frankie anyway.
Twelfth stick was Dan’s motto, learned it from
This fat man in this pitcher, our Pressy-dunt:
“Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
There’s not but one stick left.
Epistle to the Pestle
Some say thirteen is unlucky, and maybe it is,
Maybe it is. ’Pends on which way you like
Your luck to run. Thirteenth stick, last stick,
Thick stick, stout stalk of a stick.
Aint gon tell y’uns what it is, no.
Couldn’t breathe it to save my soul.
But riddle ye, riddle ye: What would be
A man’s, Dan’s, mostest master stick?
To give him half of all his trouble
And half, leastways, of all his pleasure.
Now the bag is empty.
Still More
The magic sack had ejaculated
All its sticks, standing
For several years of my living
Until I was almost thirty,
And courted a girl named Frankie,
Not yet even knowing of Ammey
Except as a child still growing
Whom I greeted sometimes in passing
With a smile because she was pretty
But never got a word in return.
Who can say of any five years of his living
That the total images of his memories
Are any sharper than these sticks?
Yet she knew she’d left them bewildered
And casting screwed glances at one another
And wondering if she was touched in her telling
Or if they were touched in their believing.
So she said, Allrighty, you scoffers,
I’ll dump all the sticks in a mixing,
And one of y’uns shet yore eyelids
And pick a stick at random,
And I’ll take it as my text.
Girl, Still, on a Pedestal
Then Day, he shut his eyes, and groped to pick a stick
And Flossie cried, Eh, law! You got his bow, the sixth.
Caint fiddle with jist a bow, so leave it lay aside
And let yan other fiddlers play while Dan
Turns from the barn-stage to scan the crowd
And sees, knees wrapped ’round a stanchion, the girl,
The Ledyard’s leastun, listening, but her eyes on Dan.
Forestalling
Knees shapely as geese,
Arms dangling their form,
Whole hanks of blonde hair outreaching,
Blue eyes of a size amazing,
Lips, lobes, bare toes,
Swells of a stung long hanging
Twined with herself,
Lone and drawn in upon herself
Only her eyes let outward
Where he could catch them
And take them as signals
For her hidden hands
Which he sought and found.
Still in the Sticks
I’ll dance with you, my lady, Dan bowed before her.
Her curtsey was the step she took to flee.
She tripped, and headlong nearly fell, into his arms,
Who caught her up and laughing drew her
Out among the other dancers, who stopped
And watched, who tried, but couldn’t
Remember the name of this humble girl.
II
* * *
Their Dance
The moonshine on his breath
Soon shared with her his fever
As if a whiff of death
Would chill but wouldn’t grieve her.
They spun until the moon
Had dropped far out of sight,
The other dancers strewn
To homeward by starlight.
His arm around her waist
Would try to pull her nearer.
She shied before such haste
And wouldn’t let him steer her.
But he was all she had
In all this world of harm,
And so she felt right glad
To hang upon his arm.
Fade-Out
He waltzed her home that e’en.
This thirty-year-old soak
With a girl just past sixteen,
Who never spoke.
Her mouth he tried to kiss
While she was unaware,
But dark caused him to miss
And get her hair.
He reached to find her face
But touched the empty air.
She’d slipped some other place
He found not where.
Bale and Woe
He has known this inevitable lonesome home-walking,
With only the wry face of the moon his fellow-traveler,
Between trees that say, We are anchored
And don’t have to move with you in your homing
Nor swing our limbs to keep our balance.
Our drunkenness, the sap we suck, is extracted
Out of the same soil that holds our roots so firmly
And keeps us, unlike you, from awkwardly staggering.
Your sway is ours, your sweat is ours, your swearing
Is not unlike the soughing of our boughs
But your lament is of the girl who sends you homeward
While ours is of this race of men we share the earth with
Who walk between us without our sense of staying.
Double Take
He cursed the trees and stopped his walk, to curse.
They wrung their limbs in mock-fright at his oaths.
But one of them, among their lowest growths,
Mocked not, but beckoned, and that was worse.
Was she a tree? Or was this tree a her?
A sapling shrub, or second-growing brush,
In silhouette against the moon’s cold hush,
As thin as any tree, but lithesomer.
Her limbs outstretched. And all her fingers splayed.
He couldn’t help but rush toward that embrace
And soon perceive that this tree had a face
Whose lines were Ammey’s, but were Ammey unafraid.
The Return
Why had she changed her mind?
Or had her mind changed her?
She still wouldn’t speak, and he
Was too far past cheer to care.
They went back arm-in-arm
Along this trail he’d solo’d,
Back-tracking footprints of his
She’d steadfastly followed.
Until her house they reached,
Dark, and no one up,
And no one caring where
She took him, or let herself
Be taken. Yard, barn, shed, tree,
Any place would be her lair.
Words
Attempt at talk. Social preliminaries.
One last futile essay on behalf of humans
Who talk before or even in the process,
Who feel to pay these words for admission
Like gentling a cow while milking.
O hear me! O reply to my soothings.
She kissed him quick to close his rambling
And held him close to ramble his quickness
And quicked her clothes to kiss his ramble,
Give him a word! Any word! O wordless word!
Venue (Vulgar)
Pestle trying clumsily to find her vale…velvet…
Vault is the word, as pestle names his virile verge,
Which vibrated voraciously in search of home.
He had no view, in this light of Vesper,
But only feel, in these ventral places.
My verse deserts me in this wanting version.
Her parts were vague, and in his vertigo,
His pestle slipped away from her vestal vault,
Unto her void, that variant vent,
Some other place. The wrong place.
III
* * *
Audience
Diana whispered to Day,
Oh, see, that’s my grandmother.
O see her! Just sixteen,
Loving our Dan at last,
Even if with the wrong place.
Day said, I see her. Now I
Want to hear her. She hasn’t
Spoken a word, not one.
Negative
She was not mute. For a fact,
Beautiful was her tongue
Whenever she chose to speak.
But now there was only one
Word which she needed use
For all my questions: Does it
Hurt? Should I stop? Is this
Too fast? Or far? Do you
Not mind this kind of way?
To all these, her tongue behind
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1 Page 64