Hierophany

I.      Wood for which the flames to lick...

Farmhouse fajitas, nachos, Helm at the helm, old time music, fiddles, a nearly full moon, clean
cool air.  Chucking my banana peel toward the brushline, cabbage shards.  My nose is cold and runny.  Hat on, hoody, vest, thermal, two pair sox, crox.  Hot dog on the stove in foil this morning, baked potato on and then in the stove last night.  Splitting wood, getting wood, arranging wood, burning wood.  Excursion to Iberia via Brays Church Road, church there at 42, Mount Gilead, cemetery too.  Pastures, cows, farm dogs just chillin not chasin.  I cut up a fallen ash that wasn't nearly as dead as I thought, somehow still going at a forty-five degree angle and living on and through the v-trunk of another tree, maybe the second hickory species here, without shaggy bark and difficult to split—pignut?  The four horses are still here, two white, one black, one...Appaloosa?  I thought that word and then Helm said that word so it must be so.  A sparse, low fog rolled in.  I spoke of Misty at Chincoteague, we talked about wild horses.

The fajitas were good.  Tortilla, mex rice, refried beans, shredded cheese, sauteed onion cauliflower and broccoli.  Sour cream.  That means the beefaroni once again will have been packed only to go uneaten.  Helm is cleaning up.  I've poured a vodka tonic but I'm feeling torpid, tired.  No soap on the skillet, hot water and a wipedown.  Love is a rose. Salsa container, scotch tape.  3M, 4M, 5M.  A $1 paring knife.  A coozee that says, "Tell Me Again How Lucky I am to Work Here."  Neil Young, Dr. Dog, water in a one-gallon jug.  A spork.  Water through the coffeemaker not for coffee, not for tea—for cleaning.  More wood for the wood stove.  Split, dried, seasoned, split again, like pellets, there is almost no smoke just warmth to live by.

A creek, an outhouse, a woodstove, a whip-poor-whil and I can be happy.  Magnets, a collander, reading glasses, paper plates, a chess set.  Leftover refried beans dumped into a paper cup.  Expletive.  Photograph of a man who did good work here.  Headshot.  Cancer.  Cardinals 94.3 FM, Kleenex, shims, Jim James. Chainsaw, axe, wedge, sledge.  Inadequate splitting stumps.  Wood cache.  Wood marked in Sharpie.  Ash, oak, hickory, wood from the stand by Planet Sub.  Oil spill.  Expletive, expletive.  "Could be worse."  Soothing reggae riddims.  $1 paring knife out for an encore.  Lemon on this green plastic cutting board.  "We could be looking for the same thing, if you're looking for someone."  Lemon, gnarled lemon, a large Myers?  No, it's from a bag.  Trash fire.  "I've got a gal that lives on a hill."

Helm continuing to clean, down with the oil spill towels.  "Skyy's the limit."  The Band.  The third disc is just the first two discs live, after all that anticipation.  Expletive.  Next pod, please.  Chess, queen, queen down, move on.  "I could have used that playlist a couple of weeks ago."  Thank God, closure.  Nicotine hitter, oh to be home again.  Nest in the outhouse, nest and nesty, dust and grass and clipped twigs, pod of honey locust.  Hexagonal hole in the seat, roots in the dirt below, where oh where to go if not below?

II.  Aged at Sea.

to the melody of "Lost on the River"

Sittin at the table
in the cold
listening to the Dead

No calendars this year

To the fridge for ice cubes

Sun and showers,
aged as rain

aged in the ocean,
aged on the plains

Aged in the Aege-
the Aegean Sea.

Raised on the plains,
aged on the sea
Aged in the Aegean,
the Aegean for me.

Big Muddy River,
close to the sea
The sea that I sounded,
when it crashed on me.

Minds colliding,
at th'estuary,
overdue books
at the library....

III.  The Take Home Jug.

Filling my take home jug
with water from the farm

When will I get back here,
by wing or by arm

Weather vane romance,
end of the line,

Wade the creek together,
some other time

Crawdads and tadpoles
laundry line

Can I get you to get here
some other time?

Crummy service,
message won't send.

It's coffee in the morning,
no breakfast in bed,

chickens in the outhouse,
that's how these things end.

Cross behind
that dusty old shed

I'm here mining for roses
but I keep finding lead

They don't want it in gasoline,
they don't want it in bread,
but it's stuck in my head.

Floors are a-tatter,
the families, they scatter

And the onions get rusty,
like that broken-down shed.

Don't steal this trademark,
don't fight this fed

By the time I'm done singing,
the memory'll be read.

IV.  Saturday Morning, Czechoslavakian Dateline.

Sources: Country to split into two,
czech czech czech.  One two, one two.

Writings songs and drinking coffee.  Hot dogs in foil sizzle on top of the wood stove while I play this Feelies album.  We leave today, it's cold out there and cloudy.  It's not red meat that gives you cancer, it's the char.  The czar, the tsar, just a little czar is ok, the rest gives you cancer though.  First hot dog accomplished, the second sizzles because it is NEXT.  Gonext.com, where is everyone is waiting—but for how much longer!  Cooking dogs on the stovetop, no condiments.  Just a little char, char boy.  Cedar, locust, hickory dickory dock, dry dock, repairs.  Fears of pears, tears of pearls, tiers of earls.  The music has stopped, the music has left the building, to pursue opportunities in another field, of sorghum.