Looking for Mark Twain

Cottonmouths at water’s edge.
Crawfish, earthworms, primal leaf rot.
Norman Rockwell mugs in antique shops.
On the Missouri hillside:
The Mark Twain Hotel (boarded up)
Mrs. Clemens Shoppes
Becky Thatcher Café
HaUCK & Co. Real Estate.
Mannequins to explain:
draped in time and place.
Tom looking like a young Mormon.
Jim out of sight.
No auction block
but there is a bale of cotton.
A fake caliope:  steamboat a comin’.
Looking up, the old lady taking
tickets says to no one
Lord, is it already?
I’ve mislaid my life.
Never returning to stay
when he had the chance--
still, if Twain came back:
snakepit investor, bungee-jumping
over the river, perfecter of
the wink--eye on the horizon?
Think about it.

—originally published by Big Muddy