Language

This land grows language like another crop:

metaphors shining like daylilies against dark pines:

a man with a whiskey still is midnight farming

a Carolina credit card siphons gas

from someone’s tank into yours

river bottoms lush with similes:

I’ll get on you like stink on a skunk

useless as tits on a bull

compliments bloom delicate as honeysuckle:

smooth as a baby’s bottom

pretty as a speckled pup

alliteration twines round your tongue like morning glories:

tight as a tick

hotter’n the hinges of hell

He don’t know shit from Shinola

sharp nettles of judgment holding on among rocks:

crooked as a dog’s hind leg

not worth the salt to make his bread

thinks he’s too good for the buzzards

tall forests of hyperbole:

so drunk he couldn’t hit the floor with his hat

too dumb to pour piss out of a boot

if the directions was on the heel

He’d screw a snake if you’d hold it still

Like heirloom seed collected and saved,

the old varieties to be savored;

And crossbreeds, mutations, pure inventions:

come a good rain, new varieties would spring up

in unexpected places.

The old man smiled and kept busy

during the long quiet hours

when there was no one to talk to,

cultivating the dusty paths of speech.

             © David Black, 2017

Speckled Bluetick Coonhound puppy
Photo from River Styx Scent Hounds