His nails were the sallowing thickness of furze, like
beaver teeth curled through the throat of the Gila, like
sagescrub lolled to obscure or assort all the 
flyaway rays of the sun to a fishtail
 
braid—his hair, left the umber of bone spurs,
plumbing up mole-gnawed, cinnabar, sixty-grit 
skin; all his thumbprints, scrofulous 
tangrams, testing the restless
 
wit of a pitiless Percival, groping 
a skull back together with
knock-kneed floss and wry-
necked safety-pins, hesitant 
 
spittle and Gojo, going the way of the
blue-footed booby caught dusting the
bladder-fat stars from boat-choked Biscayne Bay, bent,
whispering, gruff as a besom beats back the untidied,
 
crepitant tides, shrill farrows of Mary debrided
from what was the firmament mostly, now, but
chilblained toast come penitent dinner time; yet, 
 
my grandfather muttered like
Pooh Bear lost on the lam
in downtown Dothan, wore
all his shirts to unspeakable 
softness, cradled two jawless
chihuahuas wherever he strode,
and sang little songs about toddling
song birds—spends his days now
testing the tensile limits of live oaks,
minding a pile of anvils swaddled in half-
sloughed Spanish moss and an unkinked 
Kentucky rifle his 
forebears swore 
had belonged 
to Daniel
Boone 
once—Danny
still out there
somewhere,
somewhere, probing

the border, farther
than any man dares to see,
through trellising moss, all
the way to shrill farrows of
Mary stretched like dew along
toddling
river
rocks