by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator
The traditional definition of a "woods colt" is a child born out of wedlock, but it has also come to signify, primarily through literary characters such as Pete in the American classic novel The Shepherd of the Hills, a child living on his own. The loneliness aspect is perhaps the overriding psychological characteristic of a woods colt, regardless of whether the child lives in a family setting or not.
Billy Edd Wheeler, a native of West Virginia, is an American poet, songwriter, and performer who has penned a raft of familiar songs, most with a country flavor. In this poem, "Woods Colt," he examines the world as perceived by a young boy in Appalachia who is navigating through rural life without benefit of a father. It is a hard look at old biases that slice into the world of a child who has been ostracized because of a situation that literally occurred before he was born.
Woods Colt
by Billy Edd Wheeler
Poetry Appreciator
The traditional definition of a "woods colt" is a child born out of wedlock, but it has also come to signify, primarily through literary characters such as Pete in the American classic novel The Shepherd of the Hills, a child living on his own. The loneliness aspect is perhaps the overriding psychological characteristic of a woods colt, regardless of whether the child lives in a family setting or not.
Billy Edd Wheeler, a native of West Virginia, is an American poet, songwriter, and performer who has penned a raft of familiar songs, most with a country flavor. In this poem, "Woods Colt," he examines the world as perceived by a young boy in Appalachia who is navigating through rural life without benefit of a father. It is a hard look at old biases that slice into the world of a child who has been ostracized because of a situation that literally occurred before he was born.
Woods Colt
by Billy Edd Wheeler
Walking between low mountains
In the poolroom’s yard of brown beer glass
Broken as the coal was
Broken into pebbles of dissipated
Texture, I stepped contented.
Only jungle cats could
Walk more softly and more proud,
More tenderly strong, following
The code of never-afraid.
Following the clean way of temptation.
The seed was planted
By lowbrow benchers carrying
Past to present in vulgar whispers.
“Whose daddy are you, young gentleman?”
Head high to the black purse
I looked above and the
Carrier mother put me at guard.
“You’ve no call to play
With bums, with asking fools.”
At what untelling age I
Comprehended and at what
Reversed meanings I know not now.
The bench birth of truth
Put me at question and at limp.
From which loin and tree
Sprang the never proud, the
Nervous walker, the drying me?
I ask the lone companion bee,
Heaven and the symmetry.
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