An abstraction of a family,
fragments of ancient oral histories,
float past Wolfe's lonely Asheville tomb,
and his swift ghost rises with the morning
heat and follows at an anxious pace,
trying to wrap his weak wraith
fingers around each suspended
morsel of lost beauty.

There is a small isosceles notch
at the corner of a balsa wood desk
in a classroom at a nearby college (not
quite an alma mater, but some respect is due)
where he hides his gathered bounty.

Thin, frail, callous-less pointers
rub the slit gently and the smooth
whorls absorb all of the hidden delights,
and they creep up their arms and spread
through every cell like ostentatious
wisteria until the notch is drained dry.

Then, the same cracked fingers fumble pens
to pads, squandering every ounce obtained
on recyclable refuse, all origins taken for
granted in the name of immediacy, but still
ole Tom floats along existence's circuits,
tangling reality with the paranoid, and providing
the scrawny scribes with the fodder to ask why.

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