John LaMar Cole

Cinq dessèrts de Noël

 

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crash-o-taph

 

As the car performed its jerky somersaults

time slowed to cold clear viscosity 

objects floated in placid interspace

like props in space station clowning

before gravity reclaimed its tyranny

slamming all into blackness

 

doppler siren reality

came roaring back from nothingness

a freight train of bad news 

strident incoming consciousness

each boxcar carrying a precious memory

sheathed in momentary regret

piercing the serendipitous calm

with slashed arteries

of imminent closure

 

those already fled their mortal coils

rested in incongruous composure

heads thrown back, mouths agape

a flash captured snapshot

of fresh corpses having the last laugh

unblinking eyes twinkling sightless mirth

within the nocturnal kaleidoscope 

its prismatic spray of tempered glass 

strewing confetti upon

the crashing cymbal fanfare

now drawn to indefinite fermata

as the coda counted down

to the double bar

 

sibilant disapproving radiators

shushed cricket chirping

surviving headlamps

shot tardy warning beacons

to startled treetop denizens

shattered rhinestones

sparkled the asphalt like starlight

as if the sky itself had fallen

 

soon trembling hands 

wet with weeping

would hammer into place 

the homemade memorial

plastic wreath and fabric flowers

fading in the unwinking glare of day 

humbly tacky roadside cenotaph

apprising glancing passersby

someone dear died on this very spot

overgrown with burdock and ironweed 

beer cans glinting between dusty ragged leaves

 

but now

in this perfect moment 

of fatal imperfection

with the final breath

tranquility was reborn.

 

 

 

snowman

 

it was dark out still

the snow slept in moonlit humps

beyond my schoolbus window

 

roger’s house 

was the farthest out our route

along a wild winding creek

hugging a low road prone to flooding

with a mile of dirt driveway 

the brothers walked every morning

to meet us at their cattle crossing 

 

there were other kids 

to pick up later on

but they lived closer to town

 

the bus door folded open

with its jerky crank & clatter 

letting in a rush of winter

 

the boys ascended the steps 

stamping the snow off their shoes

roger navigated the shadows 

seeking my silhouette among the many

then slid in beside me grabbing my arm

though an excitable lad 

he was beside himself 

this biting cold morning

 

you must believe me he begged

before his story had even begun

 

I saw a werewolf roger said

 

as night loomed he & jamie

were rounding up the livestock on foot

fording kneedeep through 

the steep hilly snowscape

when they spied a dark smudge

pocketing the featureless hillside

and trudged their way toward it

thinking it a calf huddled in the cold 

or a cow whose time had come

 

it was a nightfall of shadowless twilight

where endless nimbus cloud cover 

would have met the horizon seamlessly

were it not for the ragged black fringe

of trees holding the two worlds apart

 

roger’s wide open eyes

sparked in the darkness

as he unspooled his tale

 

but when we got close

it stood up he said

covered with fur

from head to foot

about ten feet tall

but with a man’s face

and it screamed at us 

the scariest most horrible scream 

I’ve ever heard

and then it ran away—

on two legs—

like a man

 

it was a man I said

 

no

I swear on a stack of bibles

it was a werewolf

 

the day passed with the distraction

of seventh-grade studies

trips to the blackboard

doodling in my notebook

lunch & recess

but my mind would not let it rest

I would ask jamie

alone

 

the brothers usually sat apart

hanging with their age groups

jamie was in second grade

and small for his years

 

the older sibling was nowhere about

 

roger told me you two saw something

last night while bringing in the cows

 

yes he said excitedly

fidgeting as if the memory

made him uneasy

there was a dark spot in the snow

we went to see what it was

thinking it was a calf

but when we got near

it stood up

tall as a barn

hairy all over

and had an ugly monster face

it yelled at us

very loud & scary

then it ran away

 

how did it run away I asked

did it run away on all fours 

like a dog 

 

no he answered

looking down pensively

peering into the recent past

it ran away standing up

like a man he said

was it a man I asked

no it was a bear 

I think

 

I never drive this stretch

of backcountry road

still resistant to change

with the fortitude of weeds

unknown to harbor bears

or werewolves

without wondering

some fifty years removed

what on earth

they saw.

 

the tornado 

 

as if knowing exactly where to find us 

the twister spilled over the wooded ridge

and onto the naked riverbank

in angry turbid ambush

cutting off our riparian retreat 

 

a blustery giantess raging in widow’s weeds

slinging her cyclonic crinoline laden with sand

shaking her many-layered petticoats of thundercloud

strewing her broken necklace of hailstones

driven to mad rending fury 

over the inscrutable conflicts

of convection and barometric pressure

 

the prow of our runabout 

nosed upward to greet her

as my father pressed the flat of his hand

against our upturned faces saying only 

“Down!” before we were airborne 

and for just a moment of surreal tranquility

we floated

 

with inconceivable gentleness 

in the thick of violent tempest

we found ourselves deposited 

upon the riotous riverbank

earth & river & sky intermixed 

in an indistinguishable slurry

each natural feature having forgotten 

its rightful station in the chaos 

 

out of the spraying lees of suctioned sludge

a man shouted “Look out for that tree!”

and although the air was a sandblaster

we stared for a moment to watch it dance

tethered only by a thick strip of bark

the great tree performed

its macabre magic trick

pirouetting as if weightless

within the tumultuous blinding blur 

of attacking cloud

strobe lit by lightning flashes 

like black&white blitzkrieg footage

in wartime moviehouse newsreels

the bewitched sycamore

bowed to us gracefully

its awestruck audience

amid thunderous applause

 

thrashing our way 

through torrential opacity

we found make-do shelter 

within the ramparts of roots

of a fallen tree carted away long ago

sanctuary of wolf spiders & centipedes

our lifesaving port in the storm

my father laughed despite himself

seeing our colorful swimsuited butts

poking from the rotting stump

peeking through the swirling gloom

of the murderous maelstrom

like poorly hidden easter eggs

his arms closing around us 

as bars of a birdcage 

to keep us safe from

all that would eat us alive 

 

we held fast, our little family 

as the whirlwind bellowed her threats overhead 

and spat her curses down upon us

like exploding glass—

short of scratches, we endured unscathed

though several did not survive 

the momentous afternoon

 

an hour later I would hold a flashlight

in an operating room without electricity 

focusing its thin yellow beam

on bloodied blue-gloved hands 

busy within the perfect round hole

of the green hospital barrier drape

with its spreading dark red stain

a boy of twelve as stunned witness 

to the occult meticulous rites

of emergency surgical intervention

as doctors picked windshield fragments 

from the spine of a young woman

whose car was crushed flat 

when an oak was flung upon it

and whose screams 

would siren through my dreams

for years to come

 

in an adjacent room

visible through a forgotten open doorway

stood a pair of grim glinting gurneys 

burdened with motionless occupants

buried beneath heavy blankets

whose time for medical ministrations

had passed

resembling distant mountain ranges

on the murky horizon of intemperate nightfall

 

the tornado died a quick unremarkable death

as if the river had sucked the life out of it

a vampire overpowering its flailing victim

still standing trees 

now denuded of foliage as winter

etched their stark silhouettes 

upon the brooding twilit sky

the muddy ground of hail mothballs 

was plastered in a dazzling collage 

of tattered leaves 

like the aftermath of a tickertape parade 

 

the floating tree had torn free its earthly trammels

surrendering to the tornado’s irrepressible invitation

to join the whirling meteorological dervish

as its arboreal dance partner

now jilted and wilting

far from its lifegiving riverside roots—

we never saw it again

but lived to tell the tale

if only perforce the inextricable fortitude 

of its long dead neighbor.

 

primer fears

 

before I knew 

the countless costumes

Fear could don

two scarecrows 

stood out to me

 

my father’s silver crucifix

with its tiny melted jesus

featureless face turned inward

cheek pressed against 

the black recess of tarnish

as if in shame

hanging crucified in perpetuity

among the sparse graying hairs

within the shallow hollow 

of my father’s pale chest

the heavy sterling chain 

leaving its greasy tattoo

across the deeply plowed field

of his sunburnt neck

 

it was the palpable totem

of Death itself

verily the celebration of it

my young eyes & tender heart

surmised it symbolized 

unthinkable loss 

of parents & home 

of all I held dear

words of heaven & savior

only served to greater terrorize me 

I could not be forced

to do more than glance upon one

squirming within the constriction 

of strong paternal arms

desperate to escape

my well-intended captor

 

the other was airplanes

falling from the sky

 

no one had explained

aerodynamics nor the 

geophysics of globes

to my preschool queries 

I did not comprehend

as planes approached horizon

they were not descending

upon a fatal trajectory

to the rocky earth below 

and so I fled them

running opposite 

of wherever they flew 

 

before I had come into this world

of morbid crucifixes & falling airliners

my father worked on a crash team

of a busy airport in the postwar 40s

charging to the flaming wreckage

of twisted aluminum & steel

gouged into the tarmac

like a swatted bumblebee 

stinger lodged deep 

into the asphalt skin

buzzing furiously in ruined flight

 

the day my father quit his job

he’d seen a pilot burn to death

pulling out handfuls of his own hair

as he broiled alive in the cockpit 

the water trucks had run dry

and there was nothing left to do

but watch

and later in asbestos suits

remove the remains

that came apart like hot pot roast

arms & legs requiring separate portage

a shovel for spilled guts

loosed from their corporeal confines

steaming up his visor as he ladled them

into the body bag

swarms of green bottle flies 

carpeted his stifling suit

where another’s flesh hung

in limp gelatinous draperies 

my father removed his helmet 

purged his breakfast onto the pavement

stripped in the locker room 

and never returned

 

we had an album 

of old newspaper clippings

crash upon crash

carefully pasted into place 

between wedding photos 

& funeral programs

of the many plane crashes 

he had labored upon 

I sat in his lap 

gazing at the sooty newsprint

tawny & fragile as pressed leaves

while he unfolded each story

pointing at the grainy photos

the lives lost, the lives saved

here he is, my father, and here 

the infernal heat of fuel & steam

the soup of sweat his suit became

embedding nightmares within me 

like bee stings

 

whenever I would spy

a plane soaring above me

stitching its tail of cloud 

across the bowl of blue

I would dash contrary to flight path

as fast as my little legs would carry me

breathless with panic

then as it disappeared

where heaven met earth

paused straining to hear 

the detonation of impact

that never came

 

but the burnt dismembered bodies

the horror stories that followed

fell from the sky ineluctably

sticking to me like napalm 

my father’s crucifix 

hanging placid & unperturbed 

mute witness to it all

blind face averted

even then at five years of age

I could discern the ineffable lie

suspended there

nestled smugly

upon my father’s breastbone

above his dying heart.

 

herrington lake

 

the dead trees bothered me most

jutting out of the dark water, stark, foreboding 

the eerie way they rocked back & forth

like old folk on nursing home verandas

unknown whether in greeting or admonishment

whenever boatwake disturbed their upright slumber

 

pale skeletal limbs waved spectrally above us

as we spliced the opaque gulf between them

their hands enmeshed in the knitting 

of fat brown orbweavers

whose falling bodies thudded like golf balls

rudely disturbed from their nocturnal harvests

webs rent by our fishing boat’s silent passage 

sent plummeting to the slatted cedar floor 

where my father dispatched them with a paddle

as they scrambled from the dank puddles 

left behind by previous catches 

flopping in futile protest

 

this predatory paternal percussion 

sounded the hollowness beneath the hull 

a dull leaden bell’s tolling knell

our craft’s slender planking the only barrier 

between us and countless dead trees below

whole groves of them, mass graves of them

entire drowned forests perhaps

submerged too deep to see

the water inky with the algae of their decay

but I knew they were there

all the dead trees 

reaching upward in the darkness

scraping the bottom of our wooden runabout

with their lifeless bony fingers

 

such were the troubled musings

of my youthful mind plumbing the depths

where catfish & mud puppies drowsed

as we sought to seduce the bass & bream

from their mysterious congregations 

among the flooded woods below

 

kentucky utilities condemned to death

entire valleys of picturesque homesteads 

silos & cemeteries

tobacco barns & outhouses

and myriad doomed trees

soon to be subaquatic

removing little that couldn’t walk away 

as the dix river swelled behind its new dam

 

on interminable overnight fishing trips

alone with my reticent father 

I had long quiet hours awaiting the dawn

orchestrated by owls & peepers 

calling over the hiss of coleman lanterns

to dwell in my mind among

the inundated ruins hidden below

 

I have swum these swallowing waters 

shivered as my legs vanished mid-thigh

within the leech green opacity

and recoiled from the slimy touch

of the unseen dead trees below

wondering what other loathsome entities 

prowled within the chilly caldron’s stew 

 

but graveyards do not harbor the living

so I suspect that if there are monsters

they too are long dead and turned to bone

their flesh dissolved to soup

and any horror that lingers

resides within boyish minds.

 

John LaMar Cole grew up on a tobacco farm in the central Bluegrass of Kentucky.  His life was infused with the histories & mysteries of abandoned antebellum manors, forgotten cemeteries of Revolutionary War heroes lost deep in the woods, legendary local caves, boundless fields, bounteous creeks, and countless tales of ghosts and inexplicable happenstances.  His mother read poetry to him since toddlerhood, from Poe to James Whitcomb Riley, as well as many of her own creation, giving cadence & meter to his deeper thoughts from his first moments of consciousness.  A caver of recognition, John’s writing has been published in caving journals & newsletters for over 40 years.  Beyond that venue, his poem, “what my father taught me,” was published in the June 2021 edition of Screen Door Review. Bienvenue au Danse, John LaMar.

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