Originally Posted at “Old Ones Dream” January 8, 2014, and as a piece of “Magnolia Elegy: Place In the Edisto Fork” April 14, 2022. Honey’s Creek is located at the Outback of Magnolia, and we were “the kids out back.”
a dream
that never had a chance
that wasn’t meant
to be—and all of those cliches
it could have been identified
it was so easy to identify
but dinosaurs protest
it had to do with energy
the fundamental source of human energy
and productivity and pride
the feelings of a young God
it had to do with john l.
and good big
and modine and high times
and big red and l’s nu miss and scrap pile
and george
putney girl and black bess and sugar and big red fletcher
roo and egypt
and fraidy the brave nemesis of the dark one
all our own
once
there was grendel
wilma jean and ben blue
jerome and stiches and fur flew
and cottonmouths all around but
that was another place
but the same
and an earlier time
ah! primitive dreams and all for love
there will be other dreams
and roos and grendels and thwartings of the dark one
but they will be simpler and vested not with youth or diety
we were like the indian and bison and oklahoma
and the wooly mammoth
—just passing through
bison is back
is Sharps?
wooly mammoth via Genentech and the glacier?
what of sequoia?
and never was there a loss of promise!
COMMENTS
Tanne said… 01/08/2014 at 06:03 PM
I still love this, but now I can read it without crying. Not sure who the Dark One was.
Tom T Traywick said in reply to Tanne...01/08/2014 at 06:08 PM
No one knows but Fraidy Cat.
OT said… 01/09/2014 at 08:57 AM
“What a Zoo.” That’s what Egypt said from her perch looking in from the outside of the kitchen window. And it was. I still cry when I read it but I am OK with that. I love this poem too. Thank you for sharing it with us.