As a boy he read black scripture in creosol on the pillars beneath the truck route bridge over Scott creek. He recalls crayfish, raccoons and salmon, and old man McPhail’s three-legged cat looking for voles.
As a young man he towered over shadows of his own church and dented steel doors in the infirmary. He read Faulkner in Faulkner’s bed and did glib dumb-shows with what he thought were sock-puppets.
Older older older his tendons frayed and small bits of jesus wept thru the skin. He read what he wrote in green ball-point and signed it in a gauche scrawl.
The creosol tells more than purple text. The word is not the sound it makes. There is no meme or metaphor in paint. This relates as much of him as anything.
