Pop knows all, but doesn’t say.
I send signals climbing 828 ways
& I always receive the same response,
Yellow. Who’s this?
I say a name with a jasmine tone,
Oh, how-a-you?
Still, he says no name & why should he,
Bevy and ’em ain’t back yet.
I am fifth out of fifteen grands.
I’m outside here burning this here pile

What you burning?
Conflagrant corn water on his breath,
I can smell the happiness.
He doesn’t say.
& I think about him being ninety,
the fact he still drives a Ford & goes to see
green pretty girls enamors me.
They’ll be back I reckon
He means Hunter, my All-American cousin
who rushes miles in the fall,
She carried ’em to practice tonight.
Then Bevy go to work at the plant.
He’s more than good. The teams from Burke
to Madison County know his gait,
his position, his math. He passes
with aplomb on & off his map.