The Maker’s Rage to Order
__________________________
Everyone knew Benny lied:
wove tales & spun words
like an poet: less lie, more metaphor.
He never got lost on the Apalachicola,
never shot fifteen dove with a single blast,
never drove into Panther Swamp
on his daddy’s ’72 Indian,
& never caught a Mako off Cape San Blas.
He sacked groceries at Piggly Wiggly,
smoked Winstons in the alley,
sipped Cokes & stacked pallets.
Lived on the edge of town in his Daddy’s
double-wide & burned each night
away in cigarette butts & Bud Light.
Said one day he’d join the Marines,
see the world, lose himself
deep in Africa, some shaman’s protégé,
smoke unweaving from a lip-clenched pipe.
Benny told us he already knew
the secret words, the key to unlock worlds.
Knew how to cipher the crow’s black
laugh, how to read the midnight
sky, the cloud’s striated sine,
St. Joseph Bay’s milky cosine.
We knew his trailer, his black & tan Ford,
the tilt-back half-step he swaggered,
his Redman baseball cap,
his Metallica & Megadeth t-shirts.
No one believed him, it’s true.
But we urged him Tell us about . . .
& the tales spooled from his mouth
like paper, pristine, blank, wordless.
Changing Strings
__________________
First, let the old strings die.
Let the sound fade to a cold
Dull hum. Only then.
Unwind & listen. Treble slacks
To bass. Twangs silence.
Celebrate the dead tones,
The music once summoned.
Lay them aside, these spent
Wraps of nickel & brass.
Open the new set & feel
the cold between your fingers,
the song’s prenatal pulse,
music waiting to be born.
Letters from North Florida
__________________________
Post-summer quiet. Only gulls & waves
as the bay unfolds green & white.
Condos empty, beach houses cold.
Wind chimes ring in the salt.
Off 98, cypress roots boil
from salt marshes & saw grass.
In town, empty parking lots.
Out east toward Apalachicola,
you might pass a sand path
down to a stretch of beach
where I once cast a net,
dragging shoes through the thick.
I found a boy’s shoe here,
half-buried in muck.
How he must have fought,
pulling the sucking marsh.
How he must have felt
suddenly free here in the marsh,
where salt & fresh water meet,
where brackish water swirls.
•
I must have dreamed this place
a thousand times, sweated
nightmares of paper mill smoke
clogging my lungs like creosote,
my eyes dried to pitted coals.
Each time I crest the Apalachicola
causeway, bay oysters sing
in a blistered hymn, promise
me if I plunge my palms
deep into the surf, edged fingers
down deep through sand & scallop,
I’ll find a pearl left just for me.
If I peel back the crystal layers,
my mouth will fill with sand
so thick I’d drink salt water.
•
On Cape San Blas,
a gazebo burned one night,
glowing across St. Joseph’s Bay.
Flames rose, embers
flickering in the salted air.
I lost them the stars,
imagined them falling to earth,
these fertile seeds of flame.
•
The year I turned 15
a hurricane carried a beach
house over the road. The surge
dropped it 60 feet across
a washed-out road where
a curled wreck of concrete
& rebar. Upstairs, a china hutch
held blue-swirled dishes, cups,
saucers, someone’s history
handed down, sealed away
now in a beach home.
On the front porch,
a laced pair of black boots
sat beneath a rocking chair.
The family tore the salt-scarred
home down & rebuilt right there,
another home for another storm.
•
Since the paper mill shut down,
the bay’s resurrected blue & green,
a neon glow: almost unreal,
not the slate gray I remember,
like concrete churning,
not the chemical stench
of pulpwood & bleach.
Sulfur once stained
the air, a rotten egg stench,
the pulpwood reek:
Smells like bacon & eggs
the old folks said.
Pine-loaded tractor trailers
lined the highway,
strapped timber bound
for paper machines.
On payday Fridays,
mill workers lined
outside Piggly Wiggly,
clenching green checks:
St. Joseph’s Papermakers,
cashing the paper they printed.
•
Apalachicola. Wewahitchka.
Pensacola. Panacea. Okaloosa.
Names like quarter & half-notes,
drawn from chants that echo
in the palm fronds’ whisper.
Muscogee words. Seminole words.
Territory claimed by Spain,
claimed again my Europe.
I spit venom once, swore
I’d drive west, away from here,
toward California’s gold promise,
maybe north to New York—
anywhere but this slow grade
down to the Gulf of Mexico,
where the names settle
between your teeth like grains,
sand or salt. They edge
between my gums & abscess.
The words rot in my mouth.
•
One year, a boy disappeared
on the Apalachicola River.
Slipped beneath
the water’s melted copper.
Dove in to save a friend.
Search & rescues,
police cars, ambulances
lined the ditches.
Johnboats & flat-bottom skiffs
hunted the sloughs for weeks.
Not a sign.
They found him bloated
beneath a cypress stump,
half-rotted, gator bait,
skin softened the brackish
flow. He appears
in my dreams, sometimes,
struggling against
the current, waving
his arms, kicking
in spasms, almost dancing.
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