Narrow Light of Promise, 1935

this one's a work in progress, you can watch it change...

Narrow Light of Promise, 1935

On the long drive back from Tyler
we crave moonlight for headlamps
burned out years ago.

Nervous on the flatbed, three young goats shift legs
struggling to keep balance as we plod down rutty roads
careful of washouts and rocks.

Still thirty miles from Palestine,
in the near distance dirty canvas illuminates
with homemade torches that lead us to pause
and wait for moonlight.

We park in the cracked ditch,
the air tinned with sounds of banjos and guitars.
Sliding between canvas flaps,
we take in rows of men, their women
swaying in the hard rhythm of the gospel
hemmed skirts moving across slips
as dustcloths on oak.

Choosing the only unfolded seats left, we sit in back.
The low hum of earth moving through the night,
the crickets, the breeze - penetrates
when the preacher lifts pink palms to the crowd.

He calls for confession and testimony,
impatient for desperation of liquor, the embarassment of adultery
he promises doom for the unrepentant:
Perhaps demons will swarm our earth in the summer
as boweavils devouring our cotton.

Outside a shrill cry rises from the night,
all stop and turn as elders lift the flaps to see
one of the billys, rope turned to noose
bleating, fighting the grassrope
taught around his neck.

We run from the tent, help him to surefooting,
drive out into the night -- cool, vacant, and still       
dark.

Comments

[rick schochler]

I know this poem is still way too cliche. I wrote when I was 20...21 at most. the poem is somewhere in the middle of all this mess. I'm struggling to end the life of the "true story" and let the real poem emerge.