Woody

Sun streaks dusty through
all upstairs windows but the one.
Screenless doublehung, sashweights
invisible suspended, quiet even open,
smooth and pine and birch and primed,
smellin like raw linseed I put on
and the lavender hilltop
just outside em.

The hill's lone mapletree is in it’s red bloom,
every red robin is in it that’s liable to come.
Wormful or nappin, imperceptibly
bob-bob-bobbin from their fat robinbellies,
the only breezes the tiny ones
that smell of worms and weevils. Below em
is the hardscrabble earth.

The first paragraph is dry.
Some of the second and most of the third
could smudge if this here handheel had a notion.
The single bed set up dust
on my leavin it an hour ago
and hasn’t settled as though the snowball slowed
in this mornin quiet. The fleshburnished top
of this fine writer’s oak is beginin to warm
from my arms and the sun’s.

Downstairs, Woody just finished noisily fryin his egg
in the black iron pan on the burner,
curls of coalgas and sulphur matchtip swirl
overhead with burnt butter.
He eats plenty for a wiry guy,
more'n me, but I wish he wouldn't
smoke while cookin, he
gets ashes in the eggs.

Behind his silhouette his guitar hangs smudged
and shinin by its twisted two-toned cord
from the broke sconce on the wall,
its sunburst spruce archtop holdin a new chord.

This here hobo first sung fer me on our return trip
from OneTree, tryin to match strummin to the
time of the boxcar wheels clackin
and I figured then and there we could bunk
and wander for a little while together as
this here farm of mine dried up last year anyhow.

The only other thing not dusty in this upstairs room,
my mandolin lies half-in-half-out of grandpa’s open case
under the nightstand inbetween the two iron beds,
both saggin and unmade, all eight strings tuned perfect
to Guth’s guitar.
He likes the harmonys I give his songs.
And he sings em sometime,
noddin my way to take melody, cause
he likes the way I write and yodel, and he
loves the way I sing and play that there thing.

Someday maybe I'm gonna write a
song with somethin like,
"It's gotta be more
Than flesh and bone
All that you've loved
Is all you own"
or maybe Woody will, or maybe some-body else,
but it oughta get writ; and maybe by then
the wheat'll be back.
Yeah, them'll be golden days.

jft 2007

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