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
