Mountain Dirge Now, and: Dead Donnie The Banjo Man

TWO POEMS by Betty Payne James MOUNTAIN DIRGE NOW I walked with the three dogs along the winter hillside And down over the snowy slope beyond us Among the bare trees of winter Like a large cow the quick form came sliding rocks and snow, Breathing heavily, flashing too quickly for recognition Down among the shapes of winter through the sudden barking of the dogs. Leaped the clearing past the incline One hoofbeat, two hoofbeats beyond me Eyes flaring And I heard the breath Over to the meadow fifty feet at a plunge, Scraping fern, scattering dark frozen humus down the cliffside Into the summer butterfly lightning-bug meadow stiff now with snow, And Mamma Dog catapults after, leading the chase. Ah my friend, she carols back to me, I will capture feasting for you this time. Bones on the table, Torches on the wall, reeds on the floor, A crown for your head, my princess! I watched the deer lead them through the meadow, Incredible the largeness, the grace, the breathing of this uncertain freedom passing at a leap, haunches high, breath grating, Clearing fences, clearing silence, clearing brook, trees, ledges, The tail a white plume weaving the pattern of flight back and forth across the meadow. (Ah, my darkling, my runner. There is a creek to clear, a cornfield, a fence, the far barrier of the road.) Stricken witness to the sad, lost triumph of that run Across the cornfield, across the fence there to the far road and the miles of free forest byond, I heard Mamma's voice for a long time then. A long time, baying, joyous, Where I stood on the hillside in the aching snow beneath the poplar trees. The wild creatures move toward us in this civilized place. The mink, the woodchuck, the red fox, the deer. There is no refuge for them now in the mountains beyond. Even the diminutive ground squirrel is dying, so fragile, so precise, 29 As we drink our bourbon and speak of progress. Coal lights a million lights—feeds the freezers and the saunas, Lights the freeways, the motels, and the Dairy Queens, While the deer run over the hillsides into nothing: While the huge ground-eating machinery squanders our heartbeats, A penny an ounce, And beauty flees in snow To the last echo of a dog bark Across a time-locked valley. DEAD DONNIE THE BANJO MAN Everybody knew he was a wild man nothing could temper or tame So finally they stopped trying. Wives, preachers. Everybody. Let him go his own way, living by guns and hungry hounds and music, And it was all right I guess, An old formula already lost but one he kept anyway, A pattern of the music he could make Most times to live by. And when he made it, stooping, bending his knees that weird way, Then stamping laughter to high notes, It was a world we thought we'd all forgot Or tried to, Made uncomfortable by that lost time he musicked to maintain. Knew a good hound when he saw one. A good woman too. Seeing him slouched big-mustached, dark-eyed, was like coming home, Every time you saw him a rush of homecoming to it Like a fire burning warm somewhere inside out of the cold. A man like hardwood. Something like that. Maybe beech, maybe that kind of hard. Anyway, too hard for nails. Never broke, never bent, A moonshine man who ploughed through a certain kind of women like a spring flood But was always awkward and sweet-talking with his friends. Sometimes at three, four a.m., there he'd be somewhere at a door, The dark behind him filled with drunk guitars, old pickup trucks, Swooping fiddles. Up all night and the fields not cleared, Toothless friends twanging on the gut strings, Singing the sun up, dark conquistador drunk on music and life. Dead now. Wild man freed to the wind by his own gun, And that wild music not to be heard again. The darkness stoops, bends its knees, strikes old notes to laughter. Each time a friend dies, a pathway homeward ends. 30 ...