It is not quite a poem though it would be had it a master worthy of its impulse. It is but at the hand of an apprentice a bit of prose yet with a lilt which would transcend its mundane form and become a goodly song, born of a memory of Grandma Peters’ declaration that the fall was “the thin time” when a body like Enoch might just walk from this world into the next.
Who Will Hear?
From distant ridge to distant ridge hunting horns serenading with stories before great fires;
Bobbing over hill and into hollow the fox hounds coarse voices;
The pitch of the pack rising with the tiring of the stag;
Watery break singing with a million mosquitoes;
Chip marring the widow with whippoorwill’s voice in April;
Shadow Tail mimicking the wind in beech trees;
An upland creek caressing an old log to bubbling song;
Duck wings breezing over a watery pin-oak flat;
Old front-porched ladies quietly lilting youthful ballads;
Kettle bidding good memories with steamy report;
Vespers spreading grace at supper;
The heart sighing slumber’s release from ecstasy, weariness or woe;
Old bones creaking with joy for the life yet there;
A verse reaching to heaven on dying lips.
