The Poetry Of...
Wayne Noone...........................................................
Hex
If God would look
inside my bathroom
He'd reward me
with an outpouring
of worms and roaches.
If He would look
Inside my life
He would not notice.
Nothing to forget
of nothing even to remember.
If He would look toward you
I'm afraid His love
would carry you away.
Each day I fend Him off.
But at night
stars are the stamen
of great black flowers
drooping down.
July 7th 1863
Dear Uncle Russ,
I am in a bad way,
Having been shot in the side.
But the Surgeon says it will heal.
The battle here was terrible
And I hope I won't see such again.
They have put us in a church
And attend us when they can.
Tom Oliver, you remember him from Kierner's,
Did not fare well.
He was shot through the bowels
And in terrible pain.
I tried to get some comfort for him
And gave him sips of water from my cup.
This morning they moved those of us
Not going to die.
I could not say goodbye to Tom.
Just told him I was going.
He sat up sudden, worried
Did I want my tin cup back
I told him no,
I'd try to find another.
Coon Hunting
I was young and drinking,
took it in my head
to go coon hunting
with my buddy Mark
the friend of my youth.
We had no dogs
or hats.
Just an old Eveready flashlight,
a fifth of Seagram's,
and my father's single shot.22.
I carried the rifle,
Mark was the hound.
We finally spied a coon,
As it turned out
a big mama
trailing a litter.
I yelled tree 'im!
and Mark ran off
whooping and waving.
Coon shot about thirty feet
up an old oak,
Our flashlight too dim
to penetrate
the thick foliage in the dark.
So I'm shooting blind,
loading and firing
into the leaves.
After about twenty rounds
of bullets and whiskey
we hear a shrill cry
like an owl and a ghost,
and down through the branches
comes the coon,
big as a small bear
or so I recall,
hits the ground
Bounce
and pops up on its hind legs
snapping and coming at me.
I'm fumbling to reload the rifle
and the bitch looks to be
the size of a grizzly
and its charging me
and I hear a yell
and out of the corner of my eye
I see ol' Mark
with a rusty old pick he found somewhere
running at the thing.
He whaps it
Right in the throat
stops it cold
and I'm all shaky,
reload the rifle about seven times
and empty into the inert form.
Up in the tree
The reflective eyes of her young
Look down.
We were going to eat the coon.
Well, we never did that.
We skinned it,
But the skin went bad.
I quit drinking
a few years later.
Mark didn't
and we drifted apart.
Haven't seen him for years.
