Element

— Way on back through the underwood by Bowen’s Canal Well we’d heard it to be veiny with cottonmouths I’m not gonna lie. • For true the sheer (snake-electric) back-beyond of the place put a pull on us like a magnet. • That that rag-rope (flagged and) barred the path just egged us on. • (To go and skulk- and sidle-learn to palp and tap the edge to crack us in.) • — What’d we feel there once we’d crossed? • Veritable thought-thick trunks of swampfoot oaks. • Something like ‘a shift in the structure of experience.’ • Here was Johnny Pep (shrapped home from war) branch-dragging agglomerating discards and disjecta. • His craving wove a plexus (more a house) from limbs and leaves. • He knit us in: he left us be.   He let us watch he watched us try (to climb to ape his crisscross weave) to pitch to plait the roof. • Something like ‘Yall strayboys welcome to be welcome if you work.’ • Didn’t we ‘work’ — particular night-hoots (and near-chromatic whistle-riffs) in echo; likenesses he whittled live from hickory showed us how. • He’d let us watch him strip and shave the shagbark bark to taste (to read) to mull the grain. • Something like ‘root-room’ I reckon.   Something like • ‘When Johnny Pep hitched home from war we took to carving (curing) scraplings into shapes.’