picnicking
a granddaddy long-legs
straddles the haiku pad
tea steeping
I read the apple pits
he left on the counter
Free Verse
Comet
The Almighty has said, no
doubt:
“Now here are these two unaccountable
freaks; they came in together, they must
go out together.”
Mark Twain, A Biography by Albert Bigelow Paine
On course with Halley's Comet,
Samuel
Clemons, a mere shimmer rocking in
the ship of his mother's womb, rocking
day after day in a barouche laden with
household goods from the one-room
house in Possum Trot, Tennessee,
started his amaranthine journey. He
left behind land he never saw except
in anecdote, thousands of acres his
father John amassed along the Wolf
River, soil poor and rocky, cane-infested,
a plague John could not shed.
Tacking north to visit Kentucky kin,
northwest to the Ohio River, he drifted,
a barge propelled by whims of others.
He chugged to St. Louis on a Mississippi
steamboat, a habit formed before breath
and light. Printer, editor, river pilot,
prospector, author and lecturer, Twain
sailed about the earth, a character in the
world’s view, a persona in his own mind...
Born with the comet, Twain expected
to go out with it and did, two freaks
on singular orbits, coming and going
together, a riverboat boy from Possum
Trot and a scientific marvel sailing the
heavens, a brilliant tail in its wake.
