Phrenology
Years now but I can still see him albeit
through milky glass shedding gluey sheets
of rain, the flimsy carton of Papa Wear
pressed neatly along the folds into a caned
chair on a low porch, grape arbor screening
a setting sun, harboring bees, their legs
bristling nuggets of pollen. Amazing
creatures, finding me fifty years on
brushing off the golden grains I read
as honeyed fiction.
Shy of one hundred
knobby skull a china cabinet
draped beneath a threadbare sheet
hands like the roots of a bristle cone pine
gripping slick mossy limestone, his clear
eyes pierced me like Cold Harbor MiniŃ balls.
It returns to me as novella
set on a particular afternoon
a dozen men in work pants drawling
vowels around unfiltered Camels
aboard a flatbed trailer hitched to a Deere
creeping up the switchback road to the top
of Wear’s Mountain.
Four different versions
of the same man ferried up for a looksee
my legs dangling off the back like my father’s
his father shadowed by the brim of his
CCC pith helmet and Papa Wear
firing round after round from a service
revolver aimed at the noonday sun.
I waited for the bullets to rain down
and later, in the cool of the grape arbor
he ran his fingers lightly over my
quilted skull, making grand predictions
in the quiet presence of knowing bees.
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