At two a.m. a darkness
like a lion walks the shadows
between streetlights down
in Naptown.

Around the dusty trees
and rotted buildings
street light flows like
scars on the face
of a Mississippi poet

gone to North Korea
and back (or part way).
Talked his way out
of more than one hell
(or part way) rhyming
Naptown shadows
with the Delta sun.

True to the rhythm
of an inner drum,
purple-gummed, each year
he's won the Nobel
Prize for Peace and War
against himself, horse
dealers, jailers, black and
white hairsplitters and
bullshitters. Those scars

are stars that tell you
where he's been
with his love, coals
glowing in the cornered towns
and penitentiary nights.

Still he can't wear a poem
like a new pair of overalls.
A poem doesn't scare a Hoosier
cracker or those monkeys
jumping on and off his back.

But tonight there's po-cash
in his pocket and his mama
lives just up that street
from where he's climbed out
of a college car

at two a.m., a darkness
like a lion walking
up the paved and curbed
and guttered night.

Tom Koontz
The Painted Bride Quarterly 1988