Bringing the Message
Sometimes we met dad on his mail route
at Baggs and Glausier, near
the little town park us country boys
never got to play in. Mom
packed a Mason jar of iced tea
wrapped in newspaper,
probably fried chicken or a pork chop,
cornbread, and squash. His
postman lunch. I couldn’t wait to see
that Vitalis black
hair, the leather pouch stamped U. S.,
and his sunny brown
skin stretched over all those lean
walking muscles. Later,
after a lot of bad water had passed under
Lost Creek bridge, she
told us he had a woman in town, then
it was a man, then he
was crazy. Too many mixed messages
for a kid. One night—her
eyes red as the devil I would come
to fear—she loaded us
in the Chevy, like stair-stepped bags
of dead letters, and hauled
us through hours of dark, searching
street by street
for some driveway to deliver the cup
of brimstone burning
like John’s revelation in the Babylon
of her head.
Bringing the Message
Advertisements