Collage II: In His Craft and Sullen Art

been there for hours." "That's the strange part." The doctor's voice sounded mystified. "In most every case I've ever seen, especially ones in her age range, the patient has suffered severe hypothermia, very often causing death. But I can't see any evidence of that in her case, almost like something kept her from getting too cold. Of course she'll need watching for the next few days, but I really think she'll recover fully." "This time"—Callie heard a resolve in Eldon's voice that she had never heard before—"I'm going to insist she come to Lancaster to live with Gwen and me, or at least let me get her an apartment where we can look in on her every day. Being the only child, I feel completely responsible for her, but there's just no reasoning with her. She and my father moved into this house when they first married, and she's always flat refused to move away from it." "I never knew your father, Eldon. He was gone before I started my practice in Lancaster, and that's been nearly thirty-five years now." "I never knew him either. He died in a tractor accident three weeks before I was born." Collage II: In His Craft and Sullen Art Bellow-voiced, he scales, shakes the rude red tree of words Bitterly trailing, tracing the frost-bitten chords, Blows poems through windfall light and clamor, grinding Portraits of the artist and raging prayer songs. A voice from the asylum, the analyst's couch, An avowed drunkard, word alchemist, all womb tomb Bombast in his struts and swanks love tickles, itches, Rubs chiming vowels, his sinister grace gifts sound. Wholly, holy ritual in nature, sudden Salmon sun, owl light, red-eyed sparks charming dissonance Prickles the eyes in sea-shells, metaphor of man Tied-tongued elegies of hair, loin, bone and blood. The hand that whirls the poem, stirs the quick, halts the hearer When dreams dictate the green fuse rhythmic weather of the heart. —Dorothy Hopkins Schnare 32 ...