MARVELOUS BASTARDS
An ode to Bagger Vance.
The words find me.
They chase, hunt, rut, strut, bubble, gurgle, swarm, circle, rumble, seep, stain, sing, ring, dig echo, tug, pull, push, bully, hug, test, challenge, hammer, bludgeon, nudge, prod, embrace and place their fingerprints on me. I belong to them. They are the gospel spoken from the pulpit of my vanishing and omnipresent Elm Street basilica. The tubby deacon howls praise be to thee. He knows better than anyone how I was raised by word, hand, deed, creed, and belief. I will now read from the book of the big red barn. They are jammed in sweet, sticky summer breezes, thick as the waltzing honeybees that hum my name, faintly, droning low, busy, buzzing, daring me to find my ears. I have been stung a time or two, maybe, just maybe, the bees have it right. Time to tune in? They are the thundering, pummeling hooves of a thousand rip-snorting steeds screaming through a wind-swept plain, My tiny prairie homestead, stitched of straw and mud and dung, is held together with amateurish hands, and there is no corral, sonofabitch. They are the lounging deer, always three, sunbathing, luxuriating, in the neighbor’s yard, their dark, happy, and penetrating eyes, deep pools, twin wells, hold sagas of thickets, spellbinding to tell. If only I would sit a spell. They are the pigment of rain, and it drones incessantly here, especially when the skies clear and the cobalt conquers all the exalted excuses as I slosh, splash, and skip through the thinning, grinning puddles. They shake and rouse me from a floating sleep, cymbals (symbols, ciphers, and codes) crashing, agitating, a rock and roll cacophony. I am on that Genny soaked back road, lucid and hazy, and all the fairies wear boots, and I believe, dazed, and confused with the boys, almost men. They are shiny and rugged nuggets, at times foolish and fake, and at others as pure as heaven can be, for heaven’s sake. I once filmed clouds darting, cavorting, and dancing in an embrace – I think it must be like that when you ascend beyond the pretending, preening, and the chase.
The words leave me.
Just like that, vapor, mist, a neighbor who lights out in the middle of the night, my words, only rented, are a million ranting ravens that have taken to the sagging trees. Cawing, jawing, chirping, cooing, coughing, talons cooling, these marvelous bastards are a cast-iron blanket of heavy metal feathers stretched from Pine to Elm to Maple and Oak. Night drops its shade, a most handsome cloak, and whispers sweet dreams, and I fear I am intended to repeat myself, repeat myself, repeat myself. Until they come home. So, I wait here, with the porch lamp lit.
All I am, they are.
It has been writ.