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: Who needs a cotton-eyed hymn to say what the old shanty By the track has meant to the human story?