Homage to Buck Cline

At the edge of town, 
just past Landers' Rexall Drugstore, the road whipped right, 
then hard downhill over the tracks 
of the L & N Railroad, 
and one night in '65, high on a glass of Mateus Chianti 
with spaghetti 
       homemade by my girlfriend's mother, 
I gunned it for the thrill of the dip, 
                and peeled a little rubber 
coming back to the road … 
 
Up ahead the river, the Etowah, 
             and the buttery glaze 
the moon spread 
across the concrete railing of the bridge, 
then the traffic light at the corner of the North Canton Store, 
where sour Buck Cline 
            sat in his dark patrol car 
with the gold badge of the Canton Police 
stenciled on his door, 
          waiting for some Romeo, Don Juan, 
some small-town Lothario 
to run the light in his father's Impala … 
 
Yes, so much relies on the imagination … 
 
and what troubles he mulled 
            those tedious midnights, 
wrangling in the rowdies, the would-be toughs 
in their jacked-up car 
          circling the Burger Chief. 

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