At Moundville

 

At Moundville they called the river long man with its head in the mountains
            and its tail in the gulf they saw in a big way how the world moved before them
they touched the world with their eyes, licked the earth from a baby’s feet today the Black Warrior
            snakes from my left to my right like a giant rope of sinuous touch the wind’s
tiniest thermals laying upon it a transfer of crosshatching that burns deep
            what is the afterimage of touch a red tail hawk flushes from the steep bank
where I stand held back by a manmade boundary of rock and wire the hawk dives
            into the thermals above the river floats with wings spread wide, soars over the hardwoods
whose leaves wait to pierce gray branches the hawk cries eeee and eeee and eeee
            lights once and flies again from sight, below me the answering call of its mate
and from across the river the first hawk’s call rises and fills me eeee, eeee in the natural acoustics
            from bank to bank like my love cry to you it resonates beyond will or thought
what is the after image for touch the artisan took up a bone needle sketched crosshatches
            of the undisturbed river with only wind caressing it, placed the object she had made
with others in the reducing fire to make the pliable clay strong, strong to hold water
            to cleanse their birthed child when it glistened red in the fire light,
water that releases all after image of touch as it moves south, carries only its will, its course
            upon its back like the after image of touch, that memory and release of love

 

 

Dear Grady

 

Just after midnight in February 1952
            the snow was falling in Anniston,
                        in Calhoun County, my mother in twilight sleep,
            and I came forth – just another little one to shine
for her father, bright star in the Alabama night.

How he gazed on me, I know from my mother’s
            telling it, and I still feel that gaze, ten years
                        after his passing.  Only three days
            later, you tell me, you were born
in Mississippi, part Choctaw, part half-back. A boy

to roughhouse, to arouse the deadened souls of children
            absent a childhood, to appear down the concourse,
                        smiling, talking, carrying my work under your arm.
Conspirator, friend, almost birth twin, what is my message to you?

…as I was typing, the lab puppy dragged another piece of paper
            and I caught it just in time – a portrait of Truitt
                        with his jankey, smiling, purple-footed self and the words
            printed above in a first-grader’s distinctive hand:
“Once upon a time TRUITT went outside to pick a flower and he was so happy.”

Four flowers, a dreamy boy with brown hair, closed eyes, a scribbled
            sun, a blue scratched world behind him to catch him if he fell,
                        to drag him when he stumbled, to hold him tenderly
            past the rages of adults, stupid with lust and guilt.
Listening to you, new friend, I caught the warm breath of a proud father

gazing down at a bundle in the woman’s arms – the woman he would
            leave, and most likely long for, the bundle that now teases him
                        with reflection and difference.  The child gone to selfhood
            that tastes like crushed fireflies in a toddler’s small hand,
smells like the rusty nape of a boy’s neck, the deep kiss of someone become a stranger.

True Course

 

This morning, I set out my little ship
into a sea of fern – feathery and almost flowering
as the fiddleheads reach into the morning air.

Transplanting these, I must dig parallel
to the rhizome, knowing I will sever the tiny
root hairs no matter how carefully

I lift, no matter the black dirt that travels
with them. Parting these ferns that are delicious
as new lettuce, I know to trace the root

to an acceptable parting, then spear
the trowel sharply. My helper digs a trench
and I place the shocked plants. His strong fingers

filter back the black dirt dispassionately.
Thickened by rain all spring, these ferns –
so profuse, so heartbreaking – have

called me into the garden again.
Though I am tempted, I do not recall
other gardens but set my fact squarely to this one.

I have said before, If I am anything, I am …
but today I do not want to say, if. I say, I am
alive in the cool breath of this morning

where ferns planted by hands I’ve never seen
return, tokens of the world’s true course,
Mute partners billowing greenly in their sails of light.

A Natural History

 

In natural history, the raptor fixes its prey
from high above, a line of sight, dead reckoning to be sated.
And the monk who plows the field below will pray
fervently, above all else, that his soul be stated.
Inside the walls, the prisoner
taps his one line, a message of caution
to the other side, where the patient listener
also waits, her palm against stone as if to fasten
her heart to the one note she feels there
moving, as it does, through stone, not flesh
to flesh as she once desired.  Here
in the hard, true rhythm of her fierce belief
she knows that outside the wall, beyond release
someone walks free, breathes deep, knows she is there.

 

 

Poem at Fifty

                        for Haley

 

Coming awake
            in the predawn bedroom
                        to the scratch of your nails
            on hardwood, I remember
that past all pain, desire to be abed

I must rise, search for shoes,
            and will you not to mess
                        before I lumber, you bounce
            to the door.
On the top deck stop, I perch
            like a small ruffled city bird
                        as you merge
            into the opening morning –
of fifty years how many dawns can I claim?

 -- The shimmer as mocking bird, towhee,
            cedar waxwing, cardinal
                        wake, their songs like buckshot
rattling in my head --

or a shaken silver bracelet, charming
            me awake.
                        By now, the blood
            has made some courses through my brain
so I can start to see

dawn lift her skirt,                                                                                   
            flatfoot it in the dew.
                        A puppy nips her ankle.
            Every leaf is moving in a dance
or is a 1,000 volts of life?

Where have I been
            when all this ecstasy took place?
                        Through the slow focus
            my neighbor’s oak rises, stalwart tree,
trunk straight, limbs reaching symmetrically,

the sentry of her yard.
            Why have I
                        never noticed her? In the stillness                             
just after dawn has crowned,
cacophony like birth pains

or the knife of love,
            just memory receding.
                        I’m drawn to you,
            oak with a purpose, wisdom
shaping itself like a green flame,

bouquet, a bower of sense.
            Time to chase the ball, watch a puppy
                        from the terror of the street,
            keep holding the scherzo of birdsong
long enough to translate

dawn to day.

 

 

 

The Hunt

 

Gripping the basket’s handle –
and the thrill as a jagged sash

of wild children roiled
up the field. How they grabbed

candy eggs like hungry thieves,
too sudden and harsh for children.

I hold back –
flooded still within that tide.

I long to make the line slow down
but it pops like a cracked whip,

straightforward as death –
the progression

breaks my heart.
Better the hiding itself.

The kind adult drops
tablets in vinegar, lifts

color in wire spoons, hides
blue and yellow eggs we’ll find

in our proffered baskets.
We laugh, jostle each other to claim

what we already believe ours –
waiting under the beneficent

azalea bush, dumb as life
in the tuft of unshorn grass.

We fill and empty our baskets
in that ecstasy of expectation:

the pastel weight in little hands
tells us we are loved by someone

kind enough to steal, hide,
give, forgive, our treasure.

 

 

 

 
Headlong into Blue    

 

Get past the miles and miles of stop and start,
           get past the billboard’s jutting face,
get through the maze of small people in their small cars,
           their small lives, and worse, my small heart.

Catch the ride, heart, as the road opens
            and release into green miles dotted
with a fruit stand, a grazing horse,
           a farmer setting his watch

among the peach trees, their stunted fingers
           flaring leaves. The image of a bud crowds
time from the farmer’s mind. He looks up, sees me,
           just a gray blur, a too-fast driver

barreling headlong into blue. I breathe
            deeper now, slow down, heart, my heart says.
Turning up Fort Morgan Road, the world drops
            away from me like badly cut film –

I leave all of it. I am looking for
            the sanctuary of how people live.
Cinder block cabins painted green,
            fishing boats, a rich man’s idea of

dreamland – none of these await me but I
            touch each one, taste, marry the road again,
and the tree canopy of live oaks backlit
           with Gulf water says, Come in, come home.

I disappear into them as quick as nightfall. 
           What will I find here among the scrub pine
and salt air that I didn’t know before
           when I walked with a dog’s breath just feet ahead,

throwing my arms up to the city sky crowded
           with old oaks, magnolias
erupting in white ecstasy all over town?
           Where was I that I had to ride again

to find myself here? This night, I roll down                                                        
           the windows and let the breathy singer,
barely twenty, meet the toneless rush
           of the wind. I say, mix, night air and singer!                                                                                                                          

The marsh peepers compete now, and brackish                                           
           air hits me full force. I taste your salt, know
that ache. Only headlights on the pavement,
           only tires repeating their mantra, only

night – starless and moonless – pulls me – or is
           it opening me – or am I falling
into it? And where are you?

***

There was your breath on my neck waking
            me from the traveler’s sleep. The blue ember
of your eye, the strong muscle of your jaw,
            then closing my eyes I dreamed of clouds

massing over the waves’ outcry. There were gulls
            and a flock of pelicans soaring, then
dropping like the lost stitch of a thought –
            I pulled the blanket of your presence around me

accepting warmth the way wind moves
           and the palm fronds move. Last night the Gulf
roiled and churned – this morning
            turned over, patient for what feeds from it.

I reached for you, and you were solid
           as any stand of pines, you opened
like clouds this morning after rain,
           the rinsed blue of your eyes not questioning

how this light clarifies, reveals us.
           Later, you lifted me above the waves’ opening
face and I screamed like a girl, my legs light
           as fins. I touched the original lightness.

You kept catching me. I wanted to glide
           against that smooth elusive wall like a dolphin.
We were two humans off shore for a few minutes,
            off the road, our feet kicking sand, the Gulf

promising more than we could imagine.
           All we knew to do was scream like children,
dive and dive into one another’s arms.                                  

This Light

                        in memory of Bill Mathews

 

Writing this afternoon just after work
in my old backyard, I have to look up
into the weathered trunk
of the water oak. There is a tap-taping
that sounded almost-but-not-quite
woodpecker, and as I look up, drawn
to that sound from my wrought iron chair,
I see this light filtered through days-old brushes
of young water oak leaves: a yellow-green shot
with last sunlight that has faded even now
as I look again – up, up – to find the light
that defined for a brief moment a perfect
color – new spring green, alive, buoyant with itself –
pigments a master might worry
for hours just as you chose words that
became thought as perfectly as the distinct
chips of the cardinal trill
into one trebling line of music.
The drowsy pigeon burgles the bass,
and if I stop the line of thought and just listen
(which is what I believe you were
hoping for, after all) I hear the world, and
nothing more.