Well Bottom Blues

(much) after Everette Maddox

Atop the spoil pile left over
from digging the lagoons which
slowly slides and subsides
back to the natural flat
of this river bottom city

In June’s mock-August swoon,
after a difficult ascent with
an old man’s AWOL big toes
and the huff and puff
of 50 years of cigarettes

So many battles of my youth
fought nearby, both dutiful
to delirious youth and futile
as Pickett’s vainglorious
rush to bloody glory

I’ve counted up the casualties
of sixty eight years, tried
to bury what will not be
forgotten, cannot be
bottled up in empty bottles

and take these trees for flags
susurration as crowd roar
of applause, the riprap
of forgotten things just barely
buried in the understory

as monument enough for a life
misspent—and better at times
of repentance—a good place
to piss when Stone Mountain
is too far away to visit.