Revenant in Texarkana

(For John Fahey)

You could be sour and demanding,
impossible, rude, spiteful,
childlike sometimes,
childish othertimes,
and you pawned your guitars for a
cheap room or another beer so we
couldn't hear you play those
rolling blues-ragas,
dry like the prairies, leavened only
by the rain of real emotion learned
from being childish, childlike,
an American Primitive in
a forgotten America.