(jasper)

Jasper is a stone,
a town in Georgia
where my brother
lives.
And seems like it
should be a slur
about a kind of guy,
the way my father
used to say,
“that peckerwood.”

I ask the jeweler
if the strand of beads
I touch is carnelian.
Explaining I have just
used it in a poem,
and wonder
how close I got to
the right color.
No, he says, it is
jasper.

That jasper he really
did me wrong,
I could say that,
start another language
trend.
Rascal, rasper
jasper, jascal,
jackal.

Dogs or coyotes
have been killing
the merganzer ducks
at the lake,
I photograph
their dried bodies,
now a clump of feathers
it is a literary
kind of act,
the sort my life
is full of.

Other people may
not recognize it
as such. But both
the action and its
assesment are mine,
hence literary.
The jasper beads
are a pretty,
russet kind of color,
the sort of autumnal
shade I prefer.
A kind of poem
hanging
in a strand.

11/29/99-2