To Bright And Wet Ether - Tempests Immodestly Recalled Poem by Warren Falcon

for Jenkins, Foster, Arnold, Galloway, Wilson, Taylor, Burdette, Orders, so many others 'Wild to be wreckage forever' - James Dickey 1


Dear God of the wildness of poetry, let them mate
To the death in the rotten branches,
Let the tree sway and burst into flame
...
Let him climb it
With all his meanness and strength. - James Dickey 2


The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled - Felicia Dorothea Hemans 3

**

...where as once of the spinning stars,
docked, the spillway Galaxy spins out

or tries,

its star-child every night for a week,
from-front-seat-from-back, breaches

Nova - a star's sudden bright increase
swells, slowly inward turns, burns back

to original hover over some months
then settles half-past-and-beyond

Carolina

before I-85** was ever...



Decades later no more love cars revolve at night where
lovers neck and more; the night-patrol half-drunk
dervish, a local boy, rumbles slowly round and around
dark water, a hand on the wheel, transistor radio in the
other, at his ear tinny mountain gospel proclaims to the
ham sandwich, the Frito Lay, the Pabst, and the pickle.

Pickle's the question:

What's a lake without its lovers parked, a spawning bed
of red clay, frantic groping quick, pushed, discarded
remnants of such mark conceptions-or-not, porn tossed
out half rolled windows to be morning gathered waiting
for school bus after-school glad sons resident on the hill
compelled to treetop nights praying for glimpses of skin
mysteries, more light to see what and who might be front
seat or back trying to consumate, glad word, engendering

Chevron children, Impala breeds, Mustangs and Palaminos
half human,

also spawn of and from assorted sea creatures
Stingrays, Baracudas,

insect breeds of Spiders, of Beetles,

big cats too of Tigers, Cougars, Wild Cats,

once even a regal Cobra night stalking various

winged ones Road Runners, Thunderbirds, Sprites,

once even a Snipe,

all enthrall near-blind boys straining
on brittle limbs embracing pines,

not lovers,

not yet.



Totem for auto nights
in flagrante,

Tempests
not understood,

barely withstood
massive pagan
quakes

where sap does
rise born again

long of old half-dreams
boned aromas,

pines adolescent amonias
sticky there,

there tarred groin-boys
ache patient

limb to limb, parked,
holding their

weight without complaint

or brakes.



Tall sycamore at Garden's edge, a clearer
view, what might be there, what could come
of darkness dashboard glow manic repetitions?

In a tree, stumped, a face turns from water
to mountain distance blue, traces Northern
sites trueing all pressing want,

'an old known hill's beauty not enough to sustain
so leave, '

the lake's decree,

ventures pending
days and flashlight
nights with star maps,
reading King James'
Bard and Bible, too,

from deeper woods
earnest whispers

to bright and wet ether,

I'm gone,

by god.


<><><>

** I-85 - Interstate 85 (I-85) is a major Interstate Highway in the Southeastern United States of America.

1 quote from 'Cherry Log Road' by James Dickey

2 quote from 'Casabianca' by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

3 quote from 'For the Last Wolverine' by James Dickey