Eli
Eli couldn’t much cope with those new ways now:
All his old friends had long gone,
And he’d never lived off the family farm,
Never travelled farther than the space a child’s
thumb could cover on a map,
Didn’t have no one to visit beyond, anyhow.
His cows all got burned when that disease crept in,
And his wife didn’t too much like his drinking.
But he loved her anyways;
Though her remindin’ made him remember a lot
of what he drank to forget,
And re-see her once face, hopeful and fresh
in the dawn dew when they was younger.
He loved her too then. He too loved her still.
He loved her even as he levelled the gun to her belly
And he loved her as he put the barrel in his mouth.
But, as with all other things, he failed in this.
And as he slid, red faced, unblinking
Down against their old family range oven,
He heard her moan, far out on the cold tiled floor,
And it was like the sex
when they were young again,
And like too the time she’d given birth
but nowt came of it,
And also like the smell in the kitchen
when she once cooked,
like too the heat from that big cattle pyre
burnin’ his breast
like the fire from the whisky
as he drank the bottle’s last dregs.
All he wanted was for her to finish her bloody
nagging ‘bout his drinking.
And he never travelled farther than the span of his baby’s thumb,
And the new neighbours found them together nine months later.
