Back in Swamp Briars

                               --for Nature Boy

By Rudolph Lewis

He’s thrown in his hand, bright lights

& fast hustles, shadows of the dead.

Fast feet, quick hands & sharp rifle eyes

were his family’s legacy.

The ice-cold nerve he willed in his own gut.

Hospital bed or hoodlum alley.

It’s always been today,

for tomorrow’s a tar-baby trap.

In the survival game, it’s a high

to know what the stars want.

A finger on desire’s dark side.

A dish for every taste,

ready ever to please for cash

the easy way—a silly grin, the dirty joke

& click-click of the bootblack’s heel.

Save your pity

for the suckers & the tricks.

Little Willie, the 60-40 Man,

couldn’t hold him to the grime

Nature Boy escaped a winner

On a GI pension whole & kicking

he’s retired to his country home

in Ole Virginnie, to a two-story

white house just off Route 301

The music he now hears in evening

ears is the call of the whippoorwill.

                  *   *   *

May you live forever in this toast

as your head juts against that GI

tombstone at Jerusalem's church!

Sip this gin for the blues we share.

*   *   *   *   *