photoart: ralph murre
Huck
Forever
by
Lisa Vihos
He
comes round to my place
time
and again; but won’t stay long
a
night or two at most, then gone.
Traveling
light, he always finds me
in
the dead of night, he always
brings
a trinket—found or swiped—
remember,
it’s the thought that counts.
You can’t pray a lie, he says. I know,
I tried. I tried to be
civilized. He is
afraid
of
rattle snake skin and the new moon
over
his left shoulder. But, he can catch
a
catfish and fry it up in a lick; lay back
with
his pipe and me for the longest hours
on
a summer day. The boyish eyes that gaze
from
his weary face bust my heart in half.
In
sleep, he mouths the names of old ghosts:
Mary
Jane, Tom, and Jim, always Jim. Awake,
he
tells tales of floating down river on a raft
with
a runaway slave, a duke, and a king;
dying
more than once to take a new name,
with
con men and preachers, all the same,
in
a voice that melts butter. How he survives
in
between times, I’ll never know, but I suppose
he
has one like me every place he goes.
~
first appeared in Big Muddy
