RIVER VOICES

The Flint River surges along its journey a mere three miles from the farm where I grew up.   The town of Newton, Georgia lies along its banks and the old Newton Bridge used to be the object of great trepidation when we would drive over it.  One-lane and ramshackle (or so it sounded) it always caused us womenfolk to worry that a truck would come our way and force us into the muddy depths.  "Don't look down," my mother would warn.  What might we see if we did?

This poem, in the ancient Persian form of the ghazal, explores that obsession with the river.  The first in  a series I hope to write about the Flint, it introduces some of the obsessive imagery I've carried with me over the years.  This poem appears in the current Pembroke Magazine.

River Voices

           " ...  say the  past is a muddy

river"

                                       

                                                     -- Evie Shockley

When  she lowers her hands to the river

she feels many dead voices translating river.

Her fingers turn cold, but her lips part,

as if, like a hooked  fish, she longs for the river.

Don’t look down, her mother warned; shifting

the Ford into second gear, crossing the river.

The drawbridge’s rusty spine still rattles

memories she tries to dredge from the river.  

Old men cast their histories into the depths

she can’t reach.  Stories keep shape-shifting over the river.

The trees keep their roots to themselves;

but they let their reflections be stroked by the river. 

When she hears the cricket frogs singing,

she wants to lie down on the banks of the river.

Come night she hears voices.  A drunken brawl.  Somebody

cursing the day he was born.  Somebody trying to drown in the river.

The backwater nags at her.  Dare she strip 

down to the bone and walk barefooted into the river?

PEMBROKE MAGAZINE: SOUTHERN WRITERS

The new issue of Pembroke Magazine is fresh off the press, focused on the American South and edited by Jennifer Key, herself a rising young poet with many accolades to her credit, including a prize from Shenandoah, one of the country's most celebrated literary journals.  I hope to feature her work eventually on this blog.

Jennifer asked me to send her some poems for this issue, which I was happy to do.  The following piece had its beginning twelve years ago while I was at the Hambidge Center in north Georgia.  I had brought stacks of journals I'd kept, filled with drafts of poems in handwriting I often could no longer read terribly well.  I pulled a few lines out from my scribbles, typed them into a disk on my ancient Mac, and proceeded to forget them.  This spring I pulled them out again and completed this poem.

I grew up reading my father's weighty books on the Civil War, haunted by the photographs of soldiers and battlefields, memorizing descriptions of the battlefields.....Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg.  At the center of my fixation, though, was Sherman's march through Georgia, branded forever into my memory by Gone With the Wind.  I wrote at least three poems about that experience, one entitled " Seeing GWTW for the Sixth Time," an obsession halted, I hope, by the the last GWTW poem I will ever write (I hope) titled "Gone Again."  This poem comes at the subject of William Tecumseh Sherman from another angle.     War is still hell, and we have only to look at our latest battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan to see the wasteland it creates, the scorched earth approach that Sherman practiced so well.

 From a Safe Distance

“War is hell,” Sherman said,

torching his way from Atlanta 

to the port of Savannah,

with God knows how many

small towns left burning between.

But tonight who’d believe him?

This new war’s a video game.

Push a button.  

Just look, we are winning,

the missiles on target,

 the clean zap of

bombs hitting bulls-eye! 

A child’s game

for overgrown children. 

A genius,  that S.O.B. Sherman,

he knew, once a war has been turned loose, 

it goes where it bloody well pleases.

Growing up, I found war

in the pages of Civil War volumes  

my father collected.  Photos of Stonewall

and Lee, the lost faces of 15 year olds

and the corpses at Shiloh seemed more real 

than counterparts snapped during D-Day

or, later, the peasants  

littering a road outside My Lai.  

Back then war was a book 

I could open or close when I wanted

and draw from a safe distance

its inevitable conclusions. 

No photos tonight of the slain

on my television screen,

no houses scattered like book pages

ripped from their spines,

but soon we’ll see leakage of bodies

blown into a digitized rubble by pilots

who speak with an accent I understand,

down-home and commonsense.

Do what you have to do.  

Lock on those suckers

and bring them down.  Sherman

would be pleased, the streets burning,

nothing much left of another small town. 

My Lai----Photo by Ronald L. Haeberle

COLD SPRING RISING: John Thomas York

One of our state's best poets has had to be patient for many years before seeing his first full-length collection published.  This spring he was able to hold that book in his hands and celebrate.   Those of you who have followed this blog know that I've devoted several posts to John York's work, so type  his name into the poet's slot to the right of this new post to read more about his poetry.  Go to Press 53's website to order his book, read his biography, and learn more about the artist who created the cover image.


Today's GOOD NEWS is that John and his daughter Rachel will appear at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC this coming Saturday evening, Sept. 1, for a reading from the book and a performance of old ballads by Rachel.

  Drop by at 6:30 for this special event, have John sign some books for you, and stick around for a late supper downstairs at City Lights Cafe.   

Whippoorwill

The clear horizon was fading,

and my father and I sat together

on the warm steps,

cinder blocks painted smooth,

Daddy smelling of cows

and a cigarette, glowing, fading,

when it started, a song

both monotonous and magical,

as if God were plying

a hand pump, a musical 

machine that said, Make-it-Flow!

Make-it-Flow!  

Darkness rising from a deep well

and flooding the woods, the corn field.

I pointed, wanting a name:

“It’s just a whippoorwill, Johnny.

Just a bird, saying, Whippoorwill.”

Still the song rose from the dark,

a siren’s voice, sounding

the alarm for me and my father,

ignorant of any danger,

father-son sitting close on the warm steps

and watching the farm fading into the night.

The Gift

In the morning, getting ready for school, 

she would say, “Look at Mr. Redbird,

such a pretty, vain creature,”

the cardinal pecking at his reflection,

dancing back and forth in the sunlight

on the car’s big bumper.

And in the evening, after milking 

and dinner and the cleaning up, 

Mama sat on a bed 

with us and told stories, or she read

Johnny and His Mule, The Jack Tales,

a Bible story book.

I wanted to read, too,

but some words gave me trouble, 

so she used flash cards:

who. . .where. . .why.

She fed me words until they made

sentence, paragraph, story.

One day, the mailman left

a flat cardboard box, a book about whales,

the blue whale dwarfing

the man who stood beside it,

and fearsome orcas breached into the living

room and roamed over

the gray carpet, where sunlight

was striped by Venetian blinds: 

I turned off the TV for an hour and read 

my book, while my mother grinned 

to herself, as she cleared away her papers,

as she prepared the evening meal.

DOLDRUMS

What a self-explanatory word is "doldrums"!  It sounds like what it is, the first syllable's long mournful O sliding into the backwater liquid of L.  And then those drums, the shudder vowel of the "uh", the lid shoved down on it by the M.  And for good measure the sibilant S closing out this enervating sound of a word.  This enervating time, this summer lethargy I've been in for weeks now.

Arjun, now deceased, in a doldrums mood.  

No blogging.  Just a few poems begun, which is better than none, of course.  Much better.  One of them, tentatively titled "The Vishnu Bird" opens with a little song of promise.

The Vishnu bird startles me

this morning.  Vishnu

vishnu, he calls from the  tree

the locals call sarvis

because it blooms Eastertime,

 calling the faithful to worship. 

Barefooted, I'm walking out to the garden

in nightgown and bathrobe,

my coffee cup half full,

my head brimming over with another night's

bird calls. 

How Vishnu, in his incarnation as bird, got into my back yard, who knows.  Maybe he'll bring along some different rhythms and images.

Not even the garden has energized me as much this summer, though, Vishnu notwithstanding,  when I walk out barefooted with coffee cup in hand.  Our lettuces have been battered by rain and hail, our mustard greens gone to seed too early.  No tomatoes at all.

Still, the edges of a few leaves are beginning to turn russet.  The wind teases the hair on my arms.  Something's coming, some change of cloud-drift, some shifting of the imagination's tectonic plates. Maybe.  And though there are no tomatoes,  there are cucumbers, and more cucumbers.  What does that word sound like, cucumber?

 I leave it to you to tell me.

MOTHER'S DAY MORNING

Another rainy morning.  Another morning to linger in bed longer than usual, my dog on the floor, atop the books and pillow left below.  It's Mother's Day, so why shouldn't I indulge myself.  And my dog.  My daughter is far away in Texas.  My husband farther away in Spain.  Why shouldn't I be a slugabed, listening to the rain on the roof, my dog snoring?  Sipping coffee that's rapidly growing cold.  (Our mornings have been cool lately, here in the mountains.)

The only thing that disturbs me is a question.  How many mothers can lie thus, this morning?  We hear much being made of motherhood.  Mitt Romney's wife calls it the "golden crown."  Religious conservatives praise it non-stop.  Too many of our politicians use that "golden crown" image to fight programs and laws that have made life a bit better for mothers in this country.  In a deep recession, mothers need those programs and laws more than ever.

And what of the mothers in gay relationships, whether they be male or female "mothers"?   Our caretakers are always our mothers, if by that we mean our nurturers, even if they only empty bedpans and give sponge baths.  If we going to honor and celebrate mothers on this day, we should consider the diverse spectrum of motherhood.  We should honor those mothers with real consideration, not with hypocritical sound-bites.

My own mother lives in SW Georgia.  I will be telephoning her as soon as I publish this post.  My brother and I are lucky; our mother has a 24 hour caregiver, and our family can afford to have her, this generous, funny, gossipy woman who loves my mother like a sister.  I celebrate her.  But I also celebrate those mothers who have no such caregiver in their last years, and I honor the mothers who struggle to deal with the costs, both financial and emotional, of late-life family care, after spending so much of their lives tending children and, more and more often, grand-children.  Hallmark cards are fine. So are flowers.  Some day after day honest celebration and consideration of Mothers, not just our own,  would be even better.

Happy Mother's Day to all of those who nurture and sustain the people around you.

Happy Mother's Day to all of those honor and sustain the mother who sustains us, this blue-green planet with her wildflowers and wonders.   Her hungry mouths.  Her many creatures huddled under leaf and brush and creek bed on this rainy Mother's Day morning.

SOLACES

Saturday morning.  Still in bed, trying to wake up.  I can see it's cloudy outside, probably rain headed our way.  Like my friend Vicki Lane,  I feel burned out from talking about politics, mostly the passage of Amendment One,  and want to think about the good things that have happened recently.

One of those has to be the Wildflower Pilgrimage over in the Great Smoky Mountains Park back in April.

 Everywhere the sound of rushing water!  What better  background music to  Star of Bethlehem,  a not so common wildflower in this portion of the mountains.   Along the the Little River trail, an old logging road, we found several patches.

The word that pink Lady Slippers lay ahead on the Porter's Creek trail had everyone excited.  Cameras clicking,  pilgrims gathering around the altar of Lady Slipper.  After they left I walked back and had my own few moments of adoration.

There was rain, plenty of it, along the Lynn Camp trail.  Maybe that's why the fairies like it so much, lifting their wands out of the leafmold, creating their own faeryland.   Large gardens of Fairy Wand lay under the trees along the way.

 

A good place to be when you've grown tired of the mess that humans make of this planet.   Out with the wildflowers and whitewater,  the music of woodlands, the Blue Ridge where I am glad to live, I forget  the angry  debates about God and God's commands.  Here I find  Creation itself,  quietly unfolding, as it has since the beginning of what we call Time.

A LITTLE BIT OF GRACE

It's been  a while since I last clicked "publish" for a post on this blog.   Some Internet issues.  Some other issues.  Aren't there always issues?  How did that word come to be so common in our current speech?  For me, old fogey --or fogeyette--that I am, "issues" means journals, magazines, newspapers.  Bibliographic information.  Footnotes.  Or obituary terms for descendants or lack of. "She died without issue."  To me in writer mode, that means, poor thing, she died without ever getting published.  No issues of The New Yorker with her poems in them.  Just as well, I'd say.  Better not to be among the poets I've been reading lately in that magazine.  Nice people all of them, I'm sure.  But, you know, there are times when I think we have too many poems and stories buzzing around us, too many blogs, too much static of just about every kind grabbing at us.  Twitter.  Facebook. Flikr. All those links.   So many links everywhere you turn.


Truth is, I like links, I like writing about links in the chains that are both our bondage and our empowerment.  Family links.  Marital links.  The maddening links of child and parent.  Human and landscape, both inner and outer. The links with friends who can make you feel energized or depressed.  Inspired or envious.  I like the links some blogs painstakingly piece together, like the beautiful "Ornamental," created by my friend Nina Bagley, who lives in Whittier, North Carolina. She's an artist in just about every sense.  I don't know if she can sing, but I'd bet good cash money that she can.   She's a book/metal/jewelry artist who lives with her dog Walter, whom she takes on outings to the creek where he dives into the water like the good Springer Spaniel he is.  Visit her blog and enjoy a creative woman's perspective on everyday light and shadow.  Am I envious of her blog?  You bet.  Do I learn from it, enjoy it, relish the gorgeous photographs, her commentary that deserves something better than the stodgy word "commentary"?  Well, I woke up this morning wanting to set my laptop humming, so that I could visit her blog yet again.

 Her  posts have set me thinking.   Beyond the gray and grind of drawing closer and closer to my 70th year,  the sun still fires up the clouds outside my kitchen window, still beckons me to the doorway to watch it making its big farewell over-the top wildfire of clouds beyond my porch.   Maybe those gypsy clouds are the answers to questions I've been asking about blogging.

Why do I want to come back to this blog?  What makes me take the time on this never again to be late May afternoon, when I can see a blue so blue  through the trees that I want to leap into it from where I sit here in my living room.   That would take more coordination and sheer imaginative skill that I can muster right now, that leap, but maybe that's really what anybody who has blood still pulsing through the body  tries to do, however she can do it.  Leap right into all that green, making straight for that blue, then maybe deciding she liked the green better, the dirt better, and letting herself drift, or plummet, oops!, back again amongst all those links, all those duties, those roots.  Dust.  Dog hair.  Another meal to conjure out of leftover onions and zucchini.  More dishes to wash.

But then, I ask, 'So what?"

Do we have to go about sharing with everybody every little leap and lizard in our lives?  The turquoise lizard, for example, that skitters whenever I open the glass door to see what the dogs are barking at.  The elderberry sauce I made last summer to drizzle over pork chops.  How do we choose among all the stories, recipes, poems, posts, advice and warnings from Dr. Oz and Suzanne Somers?  I don't know.

All I do know right now is that my friend Nina's words and images have set me thinking about why we do what we do.  Or don't do.   Only connect,  E.M. Forster, that invaluable, brilliant, humane English novelist  nobody reads anymore  urged.  Make an honest connection.  That's what I want.  With a little poetry in it.  A little light sifting down through the green.  A little bit of grace.