Fool in Blue

Fool in Blue

Being Shiloh’s fool

was one of the most

peaceful things.

Oh he never thought

to call her that,

just a blue-cornered woman

with too many empty nights,

a vacuum

it was his nature to fill

in the two AM hot

Oklahoma vapor lock,

scratching on her windowscreen,

come to town for the thrill.
Sitting in the disappearing room
they’d get high and talk, drink cheap Zin--

always the best wine to go with cheap sin,

if you happen to believe in sin--

while his old lady finally got 
a good night's sleep. Being Shiloh's fool

was a peaceful thing.

She knew him for all
he was worth;
runaway country boy,

too smart homegrown freak,

aging acidhead.

(Ate a whole sheet of blotter once

he'd stashed and forgot;

thought it was too old and

he might not get off, 
but he misjudged.

Composed himself to die

on the dining room table

for two days and nights

while the party held a wake.

He was surprised as anybody

when he came down 
like a busted windowshade
and had to

go back to class.)

Being Shiloh’s fool

was a restful thing
up to a point.

She knew her purpose

and he knew his.
That night she broke,

he drove her to his dad’s pond

took off her china doll clothes,

led her into the black water

where salt tears and sweat rolled 

invisible as water moccasins in the dark
dancing their poison tango,

washed her in owlsong and moon

till her body whispered to her

she still had a heart.

Shiloh never owned her,

no one ever owned him,

and she,

she's never owned

anything.

~November 2011

posted for   real toads

 Challenge: Free Verse
This one has been in the files forever, and I think it's as free from any rhyme or contrivance of meter as anything I've every written, so, with apologies for the length, I submit it.

Header Image:Silent Night, by Kr B on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons license

The Scout

The Scout

(For the Man Who Told Me Never To Write Down His Name)

Back when I was

lost

I loved you.

I saw you as the pathfinder

alone among men known to

disarm the plaint of the frog sentinels,

and allowed to pass the trees’ seedlings

covered in their rustling beds, soundless,

walking like a snowflake over the breasts

of sleeping wrens,

sent to pull me from

the ooze and gel of the mire.

You did

but what a cost.

You lost

your beaded moccasins,

your pipe and pelts, your mule.

I lost

my pain only to see it

found in a new spot,

coming up like the weed it is

needing always to be pulled

forever.

You moved on

to another frontier of lost

but far from fallow women,

scouting out

that ever expanding horizon.

I think you walk there still, quick and

soft as the memory of a

leaf that never falls.

November 2010

  

Posted For Poetry Potluck  at Jingle's,   Monday, November 15, 2010

Image: Shotgun Hospitality, by Frederic Remington 

Source: wikimedia commons