His nails were the sallowing thickness of furze,
like beaver teeth curled through the throat of the Gila,
like sagescrub lolled to obscure or assort all the
flyaway rays of the sun to a fishtail
braid—his hair, left the umber of bone spurs,
plumbing up mole-gnawed, cinnabar, sixty-grit
skin; all his thumbprints, scrofulous
tangrams, testing the restless
wit of a pitiless Percival, groping
a skull back together with
knock-kneed floss and wry-
necked safety-pins, hesitant
spittle and Gojo, going the way of the
blue-footed booby caught dusting the
bladder-fat stars from boat-choked Biscayne Bay, bent,
whispering, gruff as a besom beats back the untidied,
crepitant tides, shrill farrows of Mary debrided
from what was the firmament mostly, now, just
chilblained toast come penitent dinner time; yet,
my grandfather muttered like
Pooh Bear lost on the lam
in downtown Dothan, wore
all his shirts to unspeakable
softness, cradled two jawless
chihuahuas wherever he strode,
and sang little songs about toddling
song birds—spends his days now
testing the tensile limits of live oaks,
minding a pile of anvils swaddled in half-
sloughed Spanish moss and an unkinked
Kentucky rifle his
forebears swore
had belonged
to Daniel
Boone
once—Danny
still out there
somewhere,
somewhere, probing
the border for, farther
than any man dares to see,
through trellising moss, all
the way to shrill farrows of
Mary stretched thinner than
dew along
toddling
river
ro
c
k
s
