Melvin Isaacs

MELVIN ISAACS by Loyal Jones 1 Mountain boy, he knew as much through senses as intellect, could tell at an instant chinquapin, mountain tea, boneset or elusive ginseng. He roamed the hills exploring each cove and hollow over aggregations of leaves that kept the secret of his and all passings. Though he was scarcely remembered in that place, each contour and substance was ever a part of him. 2 Once he heard geese in the night and saw them black against full moon, going far beyond the world he knew. Once another year, he woke to honking in a far cornfield, and with fluttering chest he stalked them on knees and belly, saw them rise all in an instant, felt his own trembling as he fired, saw one spiral to earth, a lesser thing. At once he mourned the fowl and the death of innocence and tried to imagine the place of the goose's going. 65 3 The gifts from generations before bore down on him, ballad and tale and adage, fact and myth inextricably woven into blood and character. He was heir to it all, his mind heavy, holding at once Jesus and Jack the Giant Killer, Lord Lovell and the haughty Barbry Allen. Truth and myth converged attesting to poetic and religious necessities, without which he knew he would flounder as with glandular imbalance. He lived in two worlds, a foot in each, walking as if in buckets at once too broad and too short, a bad fit he was aware. He hoped he was in one of those dreams of cumbersome and inadequate locomotion in the face of imminent peril and that he would wake up in hushpuppies—of two different styles perhaps but comfortable and swift. He knew though that it would take longer than a dream. Note: Melvin Isaacs is a fictional mountain man, who, like many of us, has gone forth to do what he does. These poems reflect his notions and ideas about himself and the two worlds in which he lives. 66 5 One talent he had was a defense against fads. It was really just his annoyance with change. He liked most of life as it was, even liked himself and he silently detested those who styled and invented, was furious to be told by shopkeepers that what he sought was out of fashion. He sneered and set his mind against those bearing good news of breakthroughs in human potential and efficiency. It was these meddlers with his comfortable feelings about human nature that he abhorred. He didn't count himself a Calvinist but careful observation had brought no hope of perfection that the faddists proclaimed. He just didn't have time for it all. 6 His companion is the child of himself who gambols, darts and lingers, while he walks sedately, thinking of dignity. Or perhaps he is ever the child and his comrade the stranger. He covertly studies others his age who appear mature and sensible, not given to foolishness like skipping and gleeful song or pranks at solemn moments. Yet once he saw such a model gentleman leap from sidewalk to rock wall in childish compulsion although quickly dismounting with sheepish composure. Now and then he vows to put behind him these juvenile ways and rivet himself to maturity, but eventually he is overcome by boredom. 67 7 "The house my grandfather built was by those parked cars," he said, "And the meadow sloped there to a pond. Woolworth's does business over the barn's foundations. I plowed the garden under Rexall's and horses ran where that department store squats. Progress had to come, they all said. We must be served with transistors and doubleknits. They're dearer to us now, you know, than dew on a meadow, wind through a horse's mane or green things sprouting from tended earth. Progress is a fickle bitch," he said toward the blue mountains. 8 Women's liberation sneaked up on him while he was enjoying a somewhat remote affair with them. He was partial to women over men and admitted his longings were a factor. He resisted, not always successfully, furtive glances over bosom and loin...