[with 3 poems by Terry Blackhawk]
Monty and I are trying some new knots, big husky knots, and we’re pretty sure we have it right this time. The stalwart little paratrooper I got for Christmas, his broad red and white plastic parachute and the web of thin strings that fix to his shoulders – they just won’t hold together. Each time we fold the chute just so, roll the trooper carefully so nothing tangles, throw it as hard and as high as we can, but the lines come loose as soon as the plastic banner deploys. Our man has plummeted to his death over and over.
It’s 1965. I’ve only been living in Wilmington, Delaware for a few months; the heritage of where I moved from to get here is firmly affixed in the nickname all the other sixth graders have given me – “Memphis.” My new school might as well be Mars Colony A, so distant it seems from Colonial Elementary. I have four different teachers, most of them are men, and they seem determined to require a boy to think. On this final afternoon of winter break, Monty and I are determined to have our last hour of fun.
The breeze has picked up. Most of the snow has melted but our hands are red and chapped – you can’t tie knots with gloves on. We pull the last string tight, tighter, fold and roll, and we’re ready. I hold the soldier like a grenade, lean back, and lob him straight up with a grunt. At the peak of its arc the little package unrolls; red and white unfurls and fills with evening’s breath. The knots hold.
And the wind takes our paratrooper higher and higher into the east.
Monty and I give chase through backyards and down long sidewalks in our housing development. The parachute dims and shrinks in the distance. We run until our sides ache and the brave soldier is out of sight. Gone. We stop, gasping, and stare into the lowering dusk as lights blink on in windows around us.
I imagine my little man has crossed the Delaware River, surprising people who happen to look up from the railroad yards, the factories and warehouses. He holds his lines tight; he swings and sways. Catching the last light from that high vantage, now he can see the Atlantic. I imagine him never coming down.
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The Woodcock
Weary of the daily terror I turn
to the mystic body of the bird. A woodcock
I found crackling the twigs and ivy,
barely escaped from a cat’s clumsy claws.
I feared for the odd angle of its wing,
the surprised flopping it made there,
but I did not fear the extreme length
of its beak or the eyes popping diametrically
on either side of its head. I loved the feathers’
deckled edges and the light weight it made
as I scooped it up and put it, limpsy and weak,
into an old canvas book bag, and when I
released it from that soft safe space
some time later, out on Belle Isle, I missed it
at once, as one would miss a friend.
It whirred straight up, explosively,
toward freedom on the other side of the river,
its pulse now gone from my hands.
Terry Blackhawk
from One Less River, Mayapple Press, Woodstock NY, © 2019 Terry Blackhawk
note: “samples Song of Myself, 10, in which the speaker imagines succoring a runaway slave”
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Sometimes a knot is so twisted and curlicued you can’t make out whether it’s one string or a handful, much less how it all connects. Let’s see, Catherine Carter told me about Katherine Wakefield’s book, which led me to Patricia Hooper, who inspired me to read Terry Blackhawk. Or maybe the lines snake in and out along different paths; maybe I’m leaving out a thread here and there, most likely it goes back way farther even than that. I know, however, that I can count on this – the connections stretch and extend and I’ve not yet reached the end.
Such a warp and weft Terry threads through her book, One Less River. The Detroit River, subtropical shorelines, paths through dunes and forest, paths through myth and memory – the poems take us someplace new with each turning page. But despite shadows and storms these poems don’t cast us alone into dark landscapes. There is light. Light rises from the companionship of solid friends like Whitman and Dickinson, from companionable invitations to partake and be filled of rich intent and novel images. It is possible to wander through this book and be surprised and also reassured. The path will definitely challenge, because living is a challenge and preserving our world is a challenge. At the end we may discover that we are all tied together a little more closely. Our knots are not fetters but the shared bonds of humanness.
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The Extinct Fresh Water Mussels of the Detroit River
+++++++++++++++ for Kathryne Lindberg (1951-2010)
These are gone: the deer-toe maple leaf, the fat
mucket, the snuffbox, the rainbow shell. Here, still,
the rusted manhole cover and the chipping paint,
the lights and arches of the elegant bridge,
all coated no doubt then in ice. Here the breeze,
here the freighters but not the car. Quiet as it’s kept,
it’s no secret the keys were left in the ignition.
Absence makes the fond heart wander, the mind
meander, the river to swallow its flow –
the self-same river, the self-same self, even the one
that knew better, the self that knew better
than to pick up a phony ten-dollar bill folded
to disguise some evangelical come-hither.
Com hither, said the bridge.
Little earwig mussel, pimpleback, northern riffle shell,
something lacy yet along the rim.
In the print gallery a dry-point fox in outline
(“Running Fox,” R. Sintemi, Germany, 1944) floats
as if on the surface of a river, water swelling upward
on the verge of breaking up its lines –
Did you float, dear bat-out-of-hell, dear gnashing teeth –
the pointed ears, the flowing tail outlined on water not water,
on paper not paper, on the not-water before there only was
water, where we are floating now, as over a great uncertainty,
a mirroring surface that hides as much as it reveals.
No more rayed bean, purple warty back, O fragile paper shell –
Where was the artist in 1944? What did he do in 1939?
You would have wanted to know.
Terry Blackhawk
from One Less River, Mayapple Press, Woodstock NY, © 2019 Terry Blackhawk
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Again, the Moon
And now the moon, its vitreous pour
so quickly come again
moonstruck moon melon moon
I drive the unfamiliar
town, going where Siri tells me
through unlit streets
I cannot dial back to another
moon, although there have been many –
moons of loss, lists, listing oh the self-
consciousness of the moon
Look at the moon in the sky,
not the one in the lake, says Rumi
The pleasures of heaven are with me
and the pains of hell are with me, says Whitman
So which is the lake and which
the sky? With a moon this bright
I cannot find the stars.
Terry Blackhawk
from One Less River, Mayapple Press, Woodstock NY, © 2019 Terry Blackhawk
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V E R S E ❦ I M A G E 