Frederick Foote Poetry

          Coal Rising

Coal Train’s a sober guest in your living room  

he plants his angry ass in the highest chair       

he won’t pass trays or compliment your rugs

social norms are beyond him

lonely eye in this new world

his mind wants cranes garages stacks of tires

a rust-scented Fantasia

a fugue that no one here knows how to name

he can’t sip wine without starting a fight

where others see diversion he sees crime

he’s got a straight back in his stony way

even though it’s only good for climbing grades

Coal Train looks for lovers across the room

he won’t move first till every lump’s been poured aboard   

worried hippie ladies and jaded techno queens         

say he’s super in bed

 



          Hidden Vein

nine tenths of men’s thoughts are of coal, the rest have an erotic motif

I face your fraying image without knowing why

the more you grow forever the more you disappear         

mechanical crickets scouring your field                             

and we’ll meet again in the coal port   

amid the sprays the rivulets of water running down

just look out far the patient colliers tip their wings      

the waves are laced with brown and gold          

our own mistrust of fire has brought us here

the rest are watching sports the super bowl

we on the other hand are drawing greater drafts of smoke    

the last virginal act before the rite begins          

your amber tongue against my throat           

like water flowing off you doff your skin-tight jeans     

the parts of you exposed I need to peel back

such ruthless physical wants such rootless claims

and yet I’d march ten miles for one taste of your mouth                        

your breast an island on which I’ll never sleep                                  

we’re guaranteed to part we need that part of the plan

you’ll keep the night I took you in the pool

something crippled a level beneath the coal

the hidden monster’s breathing blowing vents of mist or steam  

fair wind or snow the moaning of that fire’s                          

more than a soul can bear                   

          Poem for Buck Owens

Buck Owens is dead

they’ve laid him in a tender filled with coal        

jeweled like Pharaoh in a rhinestone suit

everyone broke a string the day he died

who else would start a comedy called Hee Haw

mules brayed the Buckaroos played Buck Owens guffawed

the show’s appeal was all in retrospect         

even rednecks thought it was extreme          

Act Naturally‘s the song connected with his name

Tall Dark Stranger’s the video I remember best

the Stranger stole Buck’s girl at the point of a gun

put her on a horse and Adios

the red white and blue guitar hangs by the door  

we’re stripped of one more man who kept his given name

even in Nashville thick with limousines

Buck Owens was a coal train kind of guy

          Coal Twilight

how will it be when the last coal train dies

will we find one another in the gathering haze

will the sun tip its lids to commemorate the fall        

the huge body skidding in a silent plume of dust     

will someone wave a saber over the grave

will mass be said amid the slowly turning wheels

will we have the complexion to breathe in and out

living the childlike ordure in which we were born

the sheets of blood will bring no release

no turquoise idol will be feted on  the hill

no revelatory rainbow no rapture in the clouds

just the lilt of an iron breast no longer whole

under the black rain that tracks across the rusty sand           

will we learn to chip tools from the remnants of the rails     

how  long will it take before the mind begins to build     

on the face of the land that always knew us as we were

     Roundhouse Regrets

Coal Train’s  

writing his memoirs              

on the back side of a spade                    

the Georgia Southern to Norfolk

autos backed up for miles

that was a little respect

the coal line on the Chessie

cold sleet like something out of Hell

and he stayed there 20 years

while others slept with the flatcars

he labored over mountains

telling himself it was Work

who would ever read this   

the shovel lay in the coal bin    

after the fires went out

once in Chicago

they hung a flag on his nose

and made him an armored train

they tried the same trick in Washington             

but the flag fell off

best was the Illinois Central      

a siding and tender all his own    

yet he threw it away

he was like that in his youth

he ran down babies fruit carts and buffalo

everyone got their turn

now he lifts the phone

and puts it down again

he has the disease of money

these days each dip in the Market

chimes like the angel of death

and no place ever quite fit

the ones without floods were scorched with the sun

the ones that lacked lice were hammered with hail         

there are always so many

Americas