Flotilla of shimmers in heavy noon haze

Big Daddy shakes with mirth, sees a raccoon flayed,
rocking there in a white linen suit, stains underarm
across the broad fat back. Calling out in cusses broad
encouragements to the toothless skinner's flensing steel.
Mint julep to his left hand, black barbed scourge on the right -
toothed, clogged with scrags and tassels of skin and scalp.

The sun shifts

The pool grows of gore and guts beneath the coon.
Dark flies swarm like the fuzzy ghost of a man.
Beyond banjo and jew’s-harp twang something tuneless
and vines and spanish moss drip with sweat of day.
Big Daddy is lord of all here: its father, yours, allfather,
malefactor and benefactor both. Owner of sweat and guts.

The sun sets

Yowl of yardhound and mournful roostercrow. The gold.
Glints of it in the verandah view through the cracked oak
and epiphyte garlands. Coon’s skinned now, the flenser put away,
and nobody can remember what the skin was wanted for.
Big Daddy on his eighth julep drowses, oozes thick gin drops.
He's dreamt the perfect domain, dreamt himself the suzerain.

AP Murphy

ante bellum