Jack Butler

Do That Funky Malaguena

    On a night of yellow full moon hung low at eleven,
    the air rich with summery moisture,
    the old telephone pole in the pasture,
    rubbed tilted by cattle, relaxed and blackly uneven
    and graceful with slack-looped wire,
    is more satisfactory than I would have thought to desire. 

    More and more I crave this, the freely exact—
    the slumped parallels of a tumble-down barn
    that will hold moonlight but not corn—
    a tune played fast and loose with but kept intact—
    rhythms, marriages—I’m
    not at all certain I’m not in love with time.

(photo by Kathie George)