Expansion Week 10

Taken from week 9 Calisthenic
 Trolling for Alligators with my Grandfather


June 2009. 15 miles north of New Orleans.
Like wraiths, we skiff across the womb that birthed us.
Gnarled cypresses dig their cuticles into the sweltering decades.
Our nylon livelihood nuzzles into their contortions.
Steely wolverines shiver in that belly of wrought sheet metal.
The tags salivate in their denim lairs,
 hungry to finish what the rifle will start.
The blades idle, sputtering and wheezing,
the way my grandfather drank himself into an elegy
the bayou will never stop revising.
The three quarter inch high test line trembles,
quivers with promise, a mass of scales and fear.
Behind me, the panoramic lens understands all of this.


Expansions:
Idling for Rommel in the Cradle


June 2009. 15 miles north of New Orleans.
Like wraiths, we skiff across the womb that birthed us.
Gnarled cypresses dig their cuticles in,
peeling back the sweltering decades.
Our nylon livelihood nuzzles into their contortions.
Steely wolverines cower in that belly of wrought sheet metal.
The tags salivate in their denim lairs,
 hungry to finish what the rifle will start.
The blades idle, sputtering and wheezing,
the way my grandfather drank himself into an elegy
the bayou will never stop revising.
The three quarter inch high test line trembles,
quivers with promise, a mass of scales and fear.
Behind me, the panoramic lens understands all of this.


The camera sees this, just as my grandfather did, 
years before his mind slipped into the same murk 
where this year's Christmas simmers. The gnash of 
his oars against the braided roots, his tired pistol 
edged into the corner of his splitting boot soles. 
The keel, knifing its way through those schoolroom windows,
draft papers and German advances. 


[will expand further]