The Black Plague

A Tiger Swallowtail

They’re Greeeaaaat!!! Not great just different, not prize in the box
but they follow a path, seemingly and what’s greeeaaaat! About it is
you can imagine that it’s pre-determined or just dream and upon doing
you can. When she was younger we would walk, so small (jumping)
in huge puddles, ever so little and the Black Willows would say “get
out of our way”, pushing us out of the way, into ditches on dirt roads.
Over by the brook, green Gabbro rivulets, the Spicebush fellas where
smoking and would ask us if we wanted one. I would say “no” often
never sometimes she would say “yes” and we would walk on.
Sassafras and Hornbeam, they were blue-blooded as could be and
could most definitely be found hanging around, on top, casting lines,
chummed up good or under, smoking or swilling or (they had been
ostracized from town and every hop house from here to Valley Over),
the Wayward South Docks. There, sloops-o-war, schooners and ketch,
a corvette, dotted all about but we never went, only hear about it
(made plans to one day, together maybe pack a picnic, hold hands she
said). Back in the Bend beyond the briar, after school she would graze
my hand with hers and Joe-pye, who had the measels, would point and
sing songs about me sitting in trees, K-I-S-S-I-N-G (ing) and other
such things. Father Clover stopped us on occasion and would fancy
our imaginations with our, one-day-stories-of-woo, young love. That
was spring and now in autumn fire, she in Mexico walks down to the
shore and puddling with the others she drinks from there and me, she
forgot. There she wears all black usually but sometimes with little
polka-dots maybe paisley and often twall. She mimics someone she
doesn’t know, who dresses in all black and on one occasion I went to
visit her in Pipevine but only admired her from across the street in a
tavern dimly lit. Summer got to be burdensome and muggy, the town
wasn’t the same without her. And neither was I. Poplar Jacobs died
that year (Lung Cancer, smoked a whole bunch) and Old “Ironweed”
Smith came down with some Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever thing.
Susan, from the church she was walking home one lazy night and
caught the brunt of a bourbon scourge, the back end of Hornbeam’s ax
handle. She has black eyes now. May be permanent but what is in
this town. Not her and she was Greeeaaaat!!! Come back. Come
spring she might come back but not in black though in yellow and in
paisley, plaid, seersucker, dots, all of it vibrant, alive like spring ought
to be. For now I will wait by the brook, not smoke tobacco but skip
stones.

July06