Late April, Full Moon, Scruggs Boy on the Front Porch Devising—1932

Abstract

Late April, Full Moon, Scruggs Boy on the Front Porch Devising—1932 R. T. Smith (bio) Fireflies sing love songs without a note, but the boy is learning to listen and touch steel strings like a secret. Near the greening fig tree jeweled copperheads crawl, their tongues tasting fragrant air. He catches it in a chord. The white pines are candling, their new cones a-bristle, sharp against the evening. His fingers know the feeling. When late light rises behind the ridgeline’s spruce, cows salute it with moon, moon, but he cannot catch that roundness full as a gospel tambourine with fingers clenched like claws. He tries another grip, a tickle, three fingers on the right hand freeing what the left hand strangles. The whip-poor-will in the privet can hear a soul letting go and touch it with three slip notes before it flees. The boy aches to soothe that ghost in the trees, [End Page 98] to brush aside sharp leaves and watch the bird perched and yearning, to hear its highlands minor melody, but even the lucky mortals never see one airborne as we frail and frail against the dark. Earl leans forward, his fingers form a bird of a different feather. Silver notes all along the banjo dazzle and spark. [End Page 99] R. T. Smith R. T. Smith edits Shenandoah and is Writer-in-Residence at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. His fourth collection of stories, Sherburne, was published this year, and his fourteenth collection of poems, The Red Wolf, is forthcoming. Copyright © 2012 Berea College