Poem: "Woods Colt"
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).
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