For Lewis King: The Last of the Deliverance Generation

These lines may not have been written about Edward Lewis King, Jr., nor for him, but they are of him, I think. Without him, James Dickey might never have found the river, might never have gone on the night hunt:

I stand in my own coming sleep,
A tall spirit ready to wind
LIke a ball of bright thread the wild river
All night around the still form
That shall lie exposed in the open,
Sustained at the heart of the danger
I have passed in the thickets this night
Which shall keep me safe till I wake
   And rise, and fall away.

Rest in peace, Lewis, the last of the generation of Deliverance, who died on September 12, in Sautee, Georgia.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/99/4#!/20588644/1