Old Time Prone and Dozing

Osiris - God of the Dead

"The Night Old Cyrus Stone Died"

has never been published.

Dates of composition

and revision:

May 10, 2002

October 6, 2004

February 19, 2011

August 10, 2011

The Night Old Cyrus Stone Died

James Hart

The night old Cyrus Stone died,

we neighbors like to tell ourselves,

we heard the rattle of leash and link,

claws scrabbling across the gravel road

followed by baying that mourned back

from beyond the hills’ black shapes,

distance rimmed by the gods, old time prone

and dozing under the blanketed sky.

It must have been him, we still say,

who held each velvet muzzle long enough

to slip the collars free from his prized dogs, Blueticks

called Newt, Jeb, and Matt, and lop-eared Nub,

so they too could lope the unchained night

and chase darkness, the dim scents of destiny.

We were sure it was him we heard

whistling them home by trembling wind,

the call of hunter to his hounds:

a quick piercing jolt, the bladed split

of breath through hooked finger and thumb

slicing air shrill as a crow’s frightened cry.

How long gone, but we hear him still

somewhere between hell and heaven’s gate,

or we tell ourselves we hear his hounds

hungering for what is beyond the sleeping hills

whenever night wind bays above the river bluffs,

or sudden stillness wakes us from fitful dreams

as if we too hasten through a sanguine dawn,

hearts hammering from the long run home.