The iris of your eye
Is the iris of the field
Ticking to the tock of the tire swing’s
Strawberry lemonade hypnosis

The pupil of your eye
Is a pupil of the universe
Breathing in all the wisdom and the heartbreak
Like a little black hole sponge

The sclera of your eye
Is the blinking white lights of the Ryman
Illuminating Hartford’s most exquisite fiddle solo yet
Projected down from the great riverboat in the sky

The lashes of your eye
Own the sliding boards at dusk
After all the children have heeded the dinner bell
And the rains roll in from the west

The tears of your eye
Remember your dancing days
Before the war took its toll
And youthful drops of dew still rested upon the irises

I wrote you a folk song, sister.
Think I’ll call it “Caroline,”
after your mama’s mama
and the way she’d
slow smoke a brisket
for fifteen hours,
slapping away at the jaw harp
and kicking chickens.
Man, she had heart.

Nate and I still swing down by Early’s mill
on these summer days away from work,
and hack our way through the rushes
with that Congolese machete
Daddy gave me for my tenth birthday
(the fringes remain intact).
Nate ran into trouble,
and is back in town
for a while.

I’d say it’s about time
we rosin up the horsehair
and saw away at some old gospel staples,
the same way we did
at the fiddle contests
two lifetimes ago,
when the mountain tunes lingered
in the morning mist
far beyond breakfast.

Back when the AT through hikers
crashed at our place and brought stories of the Great Trail.

Back when my daddy wore bellbottomed jeans
and could scale a rock like some sort of deity.

Back when Nate smashed Grammie’s mason jar
of flour all over the road
and got a good whoopin’.

Back when we’d dam up the creek
and dream up images for the trees.

Back when your mama’s mama
prayed to Jesus on our behalf,
and the stars still came out most nights.
Her redwood rosary still dangles
on the mirror by my Hank Williams shrine.

Yes, I wrote you a tune from the heart, sister,
where the memory wells
flow with water from a living rock.

I hope you like it.

There are stories in your eyes.

I never told you how
sometimes I fell asleep
with the thought that you
were perhaps the moon-

always disappearing
with the dawn.

I am fearful of my future
so regretful of my past
and as far as the present goes,
I don't think it will last

Escape the silent screech on walls
in the darkness, hiding down halls
run while you can into the night
fore if you stay there's sure to be--
fright

Flee from the monsters under your bed
and from the ones locked inside your head
disappear now, before its too late
fore if you stay you might not like your--
fate

I never thought
the day would come
when words failed me
or my verses lay blank
unwritten on the page
but you have stolen
even that from me
my words are
the only thing sacred
I have
the only way
to free myself
my words
are the only things
that are mine
now
my hands refuse to pick up a pen
and I am left
to drown