James Dickey in Texas
                                from his words
by Walt McDonald

James Dickey grinned, big-boned
and pleased, but when he said the words,
they drawled together perfectly and long.
Poems said Southern are rocks
in a river bottom, his body swore
to boys cocked back in boots
and red-lipped girls in tight Levis.

Even a cowboy crowd could keep
the details straight--Green eyes,
the last wolverine, a sword
for Donald Armstrong. We watched
a pilot standing on his hands,
breathing easy at last, and balanced.
Dogs sleeping at Dickey' feet

shoved up and sniffed, elk in the breeze
at Easter, a wild boar by the river
outside the mountain tent,
Doris Holbrook with a wrench,
hoping to go back after sex
without a razor strap to whip
her bare back red as her daddy's hair.

When that airline hostess fell
to her death, we fell, wide-eyed
and flailing in the freezing
beast-whistle of space,
never mind she was lying on her back,
kicking free of girdle and blouse
with wings that saved her from nothing,

not even soft Missouri mud.
All of us snuff-dipping cowboys
stared with those mid-west farmers
watching her fall from moonlight,
drowning with her in cold,
unstable air, calling with our last,
long Southern breath, Ah, God.

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