Alex Martin - A Lightfoot Death

6. A Lightfoot Death

So many times I remember him
going back into the mountains,

for a cure, for himself,
for Flora, Wanda, Bear, Luke.

For the herbs, the mountain air,
just being there, breathing it in.

He knew where the healing plants were,
what each could do. And now…

Ye come from Gert’s, didn’t ye?
No, I’ve been to see my sister, in Washington: she was singing in the cathedral.
You on your way to Gert’s?
No, I was in Washington, since I saw you last.
You goin’ to Washington?


Thoughts, words scatter blurred and dim
wheeling about his head in twilight.

He raises his great hand;
it floats in dark’ning air.

He cannot find them.
Yet he’s searching still.


Once he could take a hundred stitches,
in his scalp, without sedation.

But this pain, this cancer –
in stomach, liver, bones…

A stranger, on the edge of his country,
he crosses

into this nomansland
of dark floating figures and shades.

The good ones. They’re out there too, Jack.
Out there with the demons...
There’ll be a war, Jack.
I won’t live to see it; but maybe you will.

There are Powers in the air:
invisible Forces, light and dark,

inaccessible to me,
a campsite of ancestors

Cherokee or Celtic. It’s Milton’s world,
raised to another power.

In the sigh of white pines
heavy with snow

I hear the tread of Lightfoots
in the light world.

All the labor unacknowledged,
the secret toil, the secret craft—

his pappy’s fiddling, his mammy’s dancing,
his brother’s visions, his sister’s songs—

chamb’ring the great wind
in the base of the voice.


[Wanda]: Do you remember daddy, when you took me on your knee?
[Philo]: We don’t care, do we?


Thoughts, words scatter blurred and dim
wheeling about his head in twilight.

He raises his great hand;
it floats in dark’ning air.

He cannot find them.
Yet he’s searching still.

We don’t care now do we?
We don’t care now do we?
We don’t care now do we?
We don’t care now do we?