Drunken Puppet

For Barbara Hart

When I saw your new paintings of dolls in distress
I was reminded of Baton Rouge in the ‘80s.

It was always Chimes Street at midnight and the Bayou
for three-ball and threesomes from three until three.

We were all drunken puppets then, especially me.
I was enamored of texture and tangled flesh,

fast cars, excess, and altered states. You looked ahead
and said, “You’ll grow old and die alone.”

Now I live among a tumble of lichen-covered boulders,
Deep in the woods of Tennessee, off a road like a bended knee.

Trees sway in no breeze slim as ghosts with no shoulders,
Copper leaves like sunburnt snowdrifts at the ankles

of these huddled ranks of manikins in their autumn undress.
Well, that’s life. Like the sadness in the mirror of your painted

dolls: Reflection, Wit, Reckoning, and Ascension.
A Man with Flowers, Heartbeat, Fever, Survivor, Finale.

Your poppets have had hard lives, it seems. You were
half right. This drunken puppet died indeed, more than once

but sometimes death is needed. After my purported passing
I’ve grown old but not alone, here on the mountain, haunted by dolls.