Bob and Weave

Autumnfest

94 Autumnfest for Ruth and Ken On the appointed day three poets drove to the city and stood on the festival grounds before the still great house of a once great man. Families gazed into portable stalls where Confederate women churned butter, where ceramic dragons reared and blew flames, where pastel renderings of the low country hung in gold frames. In the field where the poets gawked, ragtag Confederate soldiers ceremoniously fired their rifles into ancient oaks, the flanks of their good horses convulsing with each shot. A cloud of gun smoke settled on the poets under the weight of a slight rain. The poets mused among themselves, “Where are the officials who invited us to read? Where are the podium and the microphone and the chairs?” But no one could answer them, so the poets began reading loudly to each other. Behind them a big band recalled the thirties and forties. Before them in the streets the bagpipes whined melodiously, and on the vacant lot next door, rockers made love to their guitars. For once the poets could not hear themselves think. Huge drops of rain from an overhanging magnolia scored their pages. They scraped their throats raw trying to make their words heard, their music felt beyond the bones of their own bodies. One man listened long enough to finish his corndog, one woman long enough to rest her back, then hefted her boy to her shoulders again and went to look at the dragons. 95 Later the poets drove to an art bar, huddling among the orange and blue heads, and talked about fame, how it had ruined the best of their kind. ...