In rainy repose,
house resting by the graveyard dock,
I wrote a blues song last night, trying
to explain weariness to the water.
Smelling rain, humid musk on arriving twilight,
my voice drops out, catches, clenches in my throat.
I spent a week there, tracking Memphis mud
through the ends of Hale and Hernando—
zigzag path of boggy sidewalk,
cat track, dog track, slur of footstep slide.
I take this story, wring it through
language fierce and fragile—
Robert Johnson cursing from a Crossroads ditch,
Wolf waking a sleepyheaded woman.
In Mitchell’s Hotel, cold breakfast on a plate,
morning radio tells the river fate,
I sit cross-legged, collapsed staring in a drink.
R.T Castleberry lives and writes in Houston, Texas. His work has been published both nationally and internationally. A noted curmudgeon, he’s sure everything you know is grievously wrong.
© 2019, R.T. Castleberry
Halfway Down the Stairs 