Marvel

I did not call to the Holy Spirit or whistle My lordy, lordy,

Nor hum one scintilla of shame. What hid in the grass

Was neither skiver nor savior, neither cheater nor ace.

Besides, the doves peering over the gutters have all gone awry.

If I’m only a man, born far from a boomer’s shack—

Hoarding sawbucks, cherry-picking the hicks like prey,

And the wusses, and the Horacian declaimers, and the lucky

Grubbers who master heartache and lurk like crooks

Among the rich and the rebadged—then I’m a rival devil,

Carrying my brag like a brakeman. And the one certainty,

That life is to be lost—and no matter the opinion, someone’s

Always a fool—has me rubbed inside like a lonely breed

With the swill edgy and chic and rough. Who asks:

By the track has meant to the human story? Or:

What’s Heaven for? The reach and grasp, the pecked-at days,

The horsey blues that lilac after hours,

The rocks I’ve carried in my coat pocket—

None of it has me shuddering on my knees.

Nevertheless, I marvel at the pigs and the ducks, at dogs and kings,

And revive this peck of flame, this tongue of lack, too easily.