(After James Dickey)
by Daren Dean
Conscious and drowning: a girl in the grassy pastureland on the plain
Works the saddlebreds, ironweed growing in manure, a locustplague
of horseflies drinks the blood from horseflesh lathered under the sunmoon
stars stabbing the tongue, draughts of thirst, cabins of woodfire frantic
mind she watches, a shake of the head, horse climbing an ash tree
anything to discourage a saddle even the watertrough doesn't tempt
green lichen surface in the shade of the cedars piercing the tumult
hooves stirring dust with an ostentatious silence.
Like this: Putting her hair into a bun off:
her neck sweating waiting for the boy in the Chevelle but knowing he will
not, never, waiting, holding her breath, the killdeer crying, buried deep in the
family plot with her grandmother's secrets get up there, she says, oh damn,
let's go,
her grandfather making his own horses crazy with an incantatory speech
an angry nasal language, a distraught holiness, scuffling yellow soil
colloquial dialect screaming bootstomp into the hallucinogenic gaslight
of the past,
railroad tracks across the blacktop, lope through the ditchweed, a woman
clothed in a white gown horsefaced with madness she waits for release
agonizing over life's tender destructions laying open the flesh to expose time's
excessive wounds always falling back the past secrets, mysteries,
prayers unfulfilled,
another lived in the old house until she couldn't stand the isolation in family
jaw muscles clenching and unhinged as she too though older couldn't
find what was needed inside her heart roasted inside like a hog over coals
eaten, enjoyed, eliminated
the fencelines arose as coyotes stiffened girl faded into the limestone wall
frantically clawing at the amber encasing outer flesh skeletal body as
preserved as a tribolite, a scar on her daughter's cheek this other daughter
singing out angry lamentations into the twilight in the distance wild dogs
kill a yearling calf,
Each night she dreams of the one-who-will-save-her never
realizing she does not need salvation but thawed veins open the arteries
allow the poisoned burgundyblack blood escape into the warm bath
a trick of adolescent falseknowledge
descending nude,
into watertub,
pain,
she, herself; known-unknown,
frantic to find the existential, the Gnostic creation alight
a rhythm of words, a resurrected language of empathy but only
failing in the apocryphal epoch defiant child where one sings to
oneself only for years until the imaginary pulsates with the blood
warbling in the ears in midafternoon vision stockings come down
horses are still begging to be rode in the yellow light of a near twister
black anvil charging across the firmament a god of dismay on the rise
evergreen night on the backlot where she follows the terrordogs to
the creek running rearward into childhood groanings of spirit
even approaching middle-age she will hear the child weeping in
the horseweeds where youth is still imprisoned a malevolent
being chained to a spike in the ground unable to communicate as
puerile lost spirit poltergeist infant,
buried in the ground in a mason jar before displayed on a shelf in formaldehyde
an unstocked pond sluggish catfish and treefrogs sing to cover the
din of ghosts and their secret talks gulping words like air don't
go too close to the river's edge says a girl's voice monosibyllic like
I did and don't sing too loud to a lover like I did and don't tell your
father about the child like I almost did it won't change a thing sweetheart
hold him close while you can in the tackroom in the haysmell
of yellow afternoon, tenderviolent, find a refuge in the memory
playing it back until it becomes the future again along the fenceline
of highway 22 where the vehicles rumble by on their way to the next lifetime
starshine hunger in the body in the backseat a Baptist church
parking lot when the sounds of gunfire interrupted your universe
of lovemaking your trapped desire elemental rain indigenous
yearning wells winds orgasms,
a lost flight of starlings sketching the face of your future child inflight
over the black concrete, beyond the cattle guard, swinging whitegate
knowing love you will be separate from it diluting it with your
grievances pulverizing yourself with stones from an ancient cairn or
on the mourner's bench,
the wild violets on a hillside know you are still you in the deepest
stillest part so embrace them with your thornrose arms in the gold
meadows, fallowed, where old wagons with wooden wheels moan
--lie among the rusted farmall tractors and decrepit Cadillacs dripping
black oil,
fetid vegetation of death, previous life's body, transformed in the
tobacco fields pioneer children still calling to you, mother, you
from their grave.
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