Jacob Strautmann – Advice for a Mountain Laureate

photo credit: weesam2010

 

Jacob Strautmann
Advice for a Mountain Laureate

Resist enough.
A buck-knife grips its butcher-song.
Be abeyant, sharp, hanging on a hook.

Watch kudzu thrive, reclaim
unemployment office parking lots.
And when an ambulance opens its doors
to the portal of a mine,
swallow more.

Open your big, garish heart,
that fiery steel furnace, men — some deaf,
some dead — banked day and night for years.

The way to leave us by going in.