Old timers tell you Mike Fink
was a legend like John Henry
or Paul Bunyan.
Horseshit
he was my great-great-great grandfather
real as you or me
worked up and down this canal and past it
out onto the Missouri, the Big Muddy
poling flatboats of grain, whiskey, passengers
Mike Fink wore a red feather in his hat
to show he’d fight any man big or small
himself a giant of a man
Fists like Virginia hams
arms like tree limbs
face all creased with scars
He’d bite off an ear
swallow it whole
beat a man’s insides to black pudding.
What a character he was! King of the keelboaters, Bangall, the Snapping Turtle… You captured him so well in your poem/story.
I do not believe that I will ever be able to eat blood pudding (black pudding here) again without remembering Mike Fink !
He sounds like a man I wouldn’t want to cross.
Not a nice guy. Best to give him wide berth.
It’s a guy you’d rather have as friend than foe i guess…
Wow! Nice guy. Not the way I remember him from Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett, but nice bit of free verse.
This has a strong and haunting voice
I can hear a song beginning to form in my hard! Enjoyed!