From This Sad Folklore Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Stood up in the huckleberry woods,
Been thinking of Briar Rabbit and your nipples,
And the sky above the coned limbs whispering like
Drunken neighbors;
They have so many things to gossip yawning upwards,
Pretending like the sky is some communal pool,
And that they were all working class evergreens,
Handymen and plumbers,
And some who tow away cars from the university;
Down on their luck except that it is the forested weekend,
And I could really leave here, because I’ve just been drinking,
And I’ve just started out,
My sack is full of peanut butter and jelly,
And the dogs are nippy,
And the trails well paved by the long bearded uncles,
The boys on coins,
The puritans and their yokey horses-
They are of only one class, the masons of the forest,
Who make homey amphitheatres from stricken lumber-
But in the Appalachians it is always raining,
And I’ve been drinking,
And the planes are down,
And the stewardesses stolen naked into the huckleberries,
And the rabbit is in his own delusions,
While Twain scribbles out an Arthurian farce to pay the bills
Against his elaborate contraptions;
The storm doesn’t abate, and I am alone and taken shelter in
A tiny outhouse beside a giant highway,
And I will wait out the night and then walk back the twenty miles
To my car,
And go home to the girlfriend who disappeared what,
A decade ago- She stricken up a tar baby in the front
Yard with a golden arm, and it is so beautiful
And frightening in its ant-hilled nursery beneath the palm-tree;
The black men are dancing all around it
And making it a peony to keep occupied until I get back,
Not knowing that I am watching them with the ghosts
In my truck,
And that I can barely contain myself,
From this sad folklore I am weepy.