In Wolfe's Domain

There was little time to devote to reflection
As we stared at the stone that bears his name
On the verdant hill above the river.
We had toured his mother's boarding house;
An eager acolyte guided us,
Showing us rooms with beds and pisspots.
We arrived at the endpoints of his life
Nearly a century after his arc.
Preternaturally tall--six feet and six--
He towered; a blurry cut-out on display
Is his lumbersome, cumbersome echo.
At first reviled but now embraced
By this town of consumptives,
His boyhood home, his resting place--
Though in-between a whistle-stop--
He wrote to distraction, a manic writer
Who distracted himself by wandering;
One day he rambled his way into death,
Which dragged him back to his mountain crib.

We doff our hats and murmur thanks
For talent evolving from the soil.