Novelist
       

Affable, he is, galumphing about the ranch in galoshes, his three-legged
dog leaned to the bog water, the peregrine hunched like a pigeon under
a cloud of ravens. He can neither be turned on nor entirely off, such
is the new circuitboard. He putters, then dodders, then mucks about.
Like a three-legged wolfhound, he lurches toward a horizon of letters.
Or cottonwoods scratching their names in a frozen sky. The grail
indecipherable, the mysteries like a mist now over the morning pond.
The mountain fog unravels. Sunlight startles the tales slope. Two elks
gallop stride for stride through the mountain meadow. They hoist the
anvil off his heart, cleat it, leave it hanging. That his writings are traced in
window frost. That his reputation rests on the tracks along the creekbed.
That the peregrine launching itself, inauspicious as a shuttlecock, toward
the aspens seems an emblem for his later years. That the thin wire of
grief, the ligature that connects the past and present, is fraying. That
the moment wants to swallow him, unravel the narrative. That when he
spreads his arms and breathes deep, he feels the wordless world entire.
That comfort. That threat.

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Copyright © 2012 Jon Davis All rights reserved
from Black Warrior Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission