| Back to e-WV The West Virginia Encyclopedia

     Walking between low mountains
     In the poolroom’s yard of brown beer glass
     Broken as the coal was
     Broken into pebbles of dissipated
     Texture, I stepped contented.

     Only jungle cats could
     Walk more softly and more proud,
     More tenderly strong, following
     The code of never-afraid.
     Following the clean way of temptation.

     The seed was planted
     By lowbrow benchers carrying
     Past to present in vulgar whispers.
     “Whose daddy are you, young gentleman?”

     Head high to the black purse
     I looked above and the
     Carrier mother put me at guard.
     “You’ve no call to play
     With bums, with asking fools.”

     At what untelling age I
     Comprehended and at what
     Reversed meanings I know not now.
     The bench birth of truth
     Put me at question and at limp.

     From which loin and tree
     Sprang the never proud, the
     Nervous walker, the drying me?
     I ask the lone companion bee,
     Heaven and the symmetry.

		

Source: Billy Edd Wheeler, Wild Sweet Notes: Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry, 1950-1999 (2000).