The new song of old Littlejohn

by James Thurgood

               old Littlejon showed up

        where the young gathered

                - he’d carve boats from junk

                                                              and sing

               before he got beat up in an alley

                                                     and disappeared

                                            I’d sit at his table

                   - let others shove off laughing -

                                      to hear his throat piping

                          wet rasp of hemp rope on wood gunwale

                fly-buzz and blade’s whisper to fish belly

                        with fresh-baked breath view-hallooing heroes’ names

                                     like corbies cawing nightly death

                              gasp of soil to delving spade

scythe’s hiss to hay-fall

                               as snakes and mice skidaddle

             footfall scrunch in snow-apple pie-crust

                             or whetstone’s growl and scratch against axe

                 cry of tree-trunk at steel’s sharp thrust

        slap and jingle of harness and hame

                     as Percheron shoulders shrug in reply

             to a cornball chorus of quack and moo

                                                     from Old MacDonald’s hey-day

                 banshee moans and howls shivering owls

in jackpines hear through shivaree

                     as Farmer Dell takes his wife one snowlit night

                           as voyageur took the St. Lawrence

                              to delightful deadly depths of fur country

                                    with lunge and plunge of paddle

                                 while in mind’s backcountry

                          babes cried and lived, giggled and died

                                         to oath-filled lullabies                 

                                  with endless gurgling of thin stew

                              cackling of eternal flame in Quebec stoves

                                      and the Christmas complaint of outhouse door

                           barking of dogs with gun-barrel blue stains

                                    in their mad maws or guns warm as dogs

                               by their masters’ sides in prairie snow

                      and chug of trains lugging boys

                                               back east to other wars

                                their ink whispering to diaries and letters

                                      punctuated with lipstick and tears

- chink of coins on merchants’ counters

            sibilance of tellers’ shuffling bills like

                                    milliner’s unfolding fabric

                     clink of needles knitting counterpoint to

                                                                   cricket concertos

                                           for a season’s catalogue of mail-order evenings

                          with plagues of snores nightly quilting the continent

                    with campfire hallelujah,

                       with Sunday’s blessing of Monday’s nightmares      

               with ranting of the walking wounded in the demented streets

                    or too-bitter rooming houses of boom-and-bust towns

                          where the rinky-dink songs are always new

                                 and the old carve toy boats

                                       to carry landlocked songs

                                                                                back to open sea