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Spontaneous

Posted in family, Imagery, tagged Bill Griffin, imagery, In the Palms of Angels, nature photography, NC Poets, poetry, Press 53, Southern writing, Terri Kirby Erickson on August 30, 2024| 19 Comments »

[with 3 poems by Terri Kirby Erickson]

Heaven

You wake in a sun drenched room

with knotty pine walls and open windows,

white curtains billowing. The warm,

salt-scented breeze carries

the sound of waves, the laughter of children,

the cry of gulls. Somewhere

inside the house, bacon sizzles in a pan,

coffee drips into a pot – and there are voices,

familiar voices – your grandmother,

your brother, your best friend. It’s been

so long since you have seen them.

So you sit up in bed, stretch your strong,

supple limbs. There is no pain,

no stiff shoulders and creaky joints.

There is no weight of sorrow or regret –

only a kind of soaring joy that lifts

and circles inside you like a kit.

And when you move across the floor,

it feels like floating, as if your body is made

of light and air – but solid when

they reach for you, when their arms

open wide and you walk in.

Terri Kirby Erickson

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Spontaneous combustion – when a ten-year old reads about such a thing of course he’s going to think, Fire! Cool! My friends and I weren’t allowed to play with matches (although we could have swiped some from our Dads, all smokers, and we certainly smoldered plenty of stuff with our magnifying glasses during the Memphis summers). So fire blossoming up all on its own?! We scrounged an old t-shirt, sopped up some oil that had leaked from a lawn mower, and stashed the rags in a dark corner of Mike Slattery’s garage. And waited. I moved away from that neighborhood two years later and I have yet to hear that the garage burned down.

I have a friend with a gift. She can wake up in the morning first thing and fire off to the rest of us in the writers group what has just flowed from her pen into her journal. “Can” as in willing and able and unrestrained. Ten lines or twenty, she shares something always fresh, light breaking, a window open to her soul. Meanwhile, I’ve re-written this paragraph three times in my head, twice on paper, and six times on the screen. I need the t-shirt my brother-in-law Skip wears: “Hold on a minute while I overthink this.”

Now I’m stashing stuff in the car for this morning’s drive to Winston, errands to be accomplished for Dad: laptop, check; Power of Attorney docs, check. Wait, I was thinking of taking Dad some flowers from the front yard today. No, too tired. Next time.

And when might that next time arrive? Snipping zinnias, marigolds, anise hyssop, coaxing their stems into an old bread bag with a wet paper towel in the bottom, fitting the fresh bouquet into my cup holder – oh, my! Flames of purple and scarlet and bright orange, scent of mint and musky asters – pulling out of the driveway, how spontaneously I combust!

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Sunflowers

In our well-manicured yard

where a clover can’t show its face

or risk dire consequences, a row

of sunflowers sprang up by the bird

feeder, claiming the kitchen

window for their own. Such thick

stalks and heavy flowers belong

in children’s stories, where

gardens bloom in shapes

and colors seldom imagined

and mushroom grow as big

as houses. With great dark eyes

surrounded by yellow lashes,

they follow the sun on its daily

journey – a bevy of bold young

girls in love with the same boy.

Dazzling beauties all, showing

up our prim blades of grass

and trimmed bushes like hula

dancers in a room full of pilgrims.

Terri Kirby Erickson

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clouds cast shadows across the ground like whales swimming through clear water

a bevy of bold young girls in love with the same boy [sunflowers]

the yellow-haired girl whose hands rested in her lap like fresh-picked lilies

her fingers dancing over tubes of lipstick as if they were piano keys, and she, learning a new song

Terri Kirby Erickson’s poems delight in the perfect image, the lance of daylight that makes shadows radiant. She populates her lines with characters from every neighborhood and every family, her own included, and she reveals their secrets, unknown sometimes even to them, but she does it with language so airy and effortless that I imagine her raising her pen like a lightning rod and drawing to it from heaven a bright spark of inspiration. Spontaneous, emerging fully formed from the heart. The rest of us bail the bilge as we adhere to the adage, “Writing is re-writing,” while Terri is skipping stones across the water.

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In the Palms of Angels by Terri Kirby Erickson is available at PRESS 53

More by Terri at Verse & Image HERE

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Grandmother’s Lamp

In the quiet stillness of a snowy evening,

the earth is white as angel wings and the sky

purple as lilacs pressed against the window

pane. The soft glow of Grandmother’s lamp,

with its yellowed shade and pattern

of porcelain roses, falls on the antique tabletop

and the picture of my mother, the ballet

dancer, posing. From the street,

it’s just another lamp in a long row of lighted

windows, but to me, it is the sweet comfort

of my grandmother’s face, bent earnestly

over her needle point, or patiently putting together

another scrapbook of memories, pasted just so

on the page. It is her quiet certainty that this, too,

shall pass, that God hears our prayers,

and the heaven is not the stuff of fairy tales

woven to quiet our fears, but as real as the lamp

she left for me, to light my way there.

Terri Kirby Erickson

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Tether

Posted in family, poetry, tagged Bill Griffin, Bird Missing from One Shoulder, imagery, Linda Annas Ferguson, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing on August 23, 2024| 8 Comments »

[with 3 poems by Linda Annas Ferguson]

Family Reunion

I have to reach deeper each year

for all that is stored

in the pockets of this house.

This is a day we have to slow ourselves

to feel what time has deepened.

My own body, half-remembering,

lingers in a doorway.

Children pick plums

off the near-bare tree

outside the kitchen.

The day dissolves into hungry reaching.

Mother watches at the window

drinking in the one life she must live,

rolls lint in her apron packet,

suffers love in the smallest of things.

She is tired now, a fragile cup

to be hummed into.

I can hear a familiar lullaby

in her good-byes.

We leave all at once

like awkward adolescents

avoiding an intimacy,

Mother’s hands folded on her lap

to fill its emptiness.

We are already

thinking of tomorrow

as if the past

is just a house we visit.

Linda Annas Ferguson

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“Hey, Bert, how about if your Mom rides with Aunt Jodi?” We are visiting Linda’s youngest sister in West Virginia, first time since Bert was a toddler. This afternoon he’s been running, toad-hopping, climbing, all out exploring the old house and the new one going up beside it. If there is a tether between him and his mother, it has not been visible. Now we’re preparing to drive to nearby Babcock State Park, but we won’t all fit in one car and there’s just the one car seat, in ours. So how about it, Bert? “No! I want Mommy to ride with me.”

Perihelion for comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is just weeks away, mid-September 2024; what will happen as it reaches its orbit’s closest point to the sun? How many thousands or millions of years has it been since it last passed this way? It is so small and it will grow so hot, nearer to the sun than Mercury – will it crack like cold glass filled with hot tea? Or will it hold together, swing wide, its long tail swishing across its face to become anti-tail, a leash preceding the body back into darkness and cold? Those who follow the comet don’t see its tether of gravity but they measure its pull and calculate its path, a once in a million years opportunity.

I haven’t lived in the same home with my mother since June 15, 1974. Even before that there was the year in West Berlin as an exchange student and the three years away at college. Then came fifty years with just a week here and a week there under the same roof, vacations, taking for granted that Mom would still scramble my eggs and make red-eye gravy every morning. And then these last few weeks. Sitting beside her on the couch helping her fill out the Jumble on the comics page. (Me helping her? Inconceivable.) Trying to convince her to eat one more bite of pudding. Bringing fresh flowers from my front yard which never fail to raise a smile. I’ve been saying little goodbyes for months (be honest, for years) and convinced myself I’d laid aside the tether with gentleness and with calm. Perhaps, to be even more honest, I’m only now really feeling its strength.

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Mother’s Funeral, the Family Viewing

You linger in the room, a dark silk.

We sit around in massive silence,

then pleasant and uneasy,

discuss how you willed yourself to die.

We all saw you going,

never waved to you to come back,

as if we did not think

you would really go.

Your body lies life-like

as if dreaming motion.

I feel my own aging,

my hands cold like yours.

I rinse my lips after kissing your cheek

as if death will wash off. I can still see

your closed eyes, your mouth

poised as if forming a thought.

I turn around, expect you

to be standing in the doorway.

you are not there.

You have finally stopped leaving.

Linda Annas Ferguson

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I learned this in grade school: the roots we can’t see are as big as the branches we can. What tethers the tree to earth and nourishes it is so easy to take for granted. Reading Bird Missing from One Shoulder by Linda Annas Ferguson, I imagine her writing these poems twenty years ago and revealing, first for herself and today for me, much that must have once been hidden. Much that must have been difficult to see as it was happening and difficult to return to later. But Linda’s poetry takes nothing for granted. The connections, the ties, the necessary tug and pull of the heart, all are made beautifully plain.

What is the soil that covers these roots of ours and conceals what should be so plain that we learn it in grade school? Time, of course, saps memory. Yesterday I asked my father about something my mother had told me that I wanted to recall, but it was beyond him. More than time, though, are the curtains we ourselves hang or with which we allow the dailyness of life to cloak us. Some memories are painful; I hold them at bay until the veil frays at 4 AM and they intrude. Some I push aside and promise to deal with later. And some connections, even when truly vital, can’t compete with worrying about the bills and getting to an appointment on time.

Enter poetry. To write, one must pause at least long enough to pick up a pen. Not that a placid morning free of responsibilities is required – I confess I keep a blank page on a clipboard in the passenger seat beside me and start most of my poems at 65 MPH. The “pause,” though, is metaphor for willingness – to open oneself; to glimpse the unseen; to accept that there are tethers that weave through all of our moments and all of our relationships. Sweet, strong, nourishing roots that hold us down, that hold us up. Love, pervasive and powerful as gravity, swings me every day around the sun.

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Mama’s Closet

I can feel her here under the stairs

where she stores pieces of herself

on shelves in yellowed shoe boxes,

a report card from fifth grade,

her mother’s signature in faded pencil

on the bottom line.

A group picture, women workers

outside on the gray grass of the cotton mill,

its tall brick wall the only background,

her fourteen-year-old face

lost in frowns

and fixed smiles of the front row.

Another photo at twenty, a Saturday afternoon

on a steel bridge, Daddy’s arm

around her shoulder posed for a future.

Three purses on ten-penny nails, full of notes,

mementos, money she hides for a child’s needs,

a winter coat, a Sunday dress.

I can feel her here, under the stairs,

every corner collecting her plain

unperfumed warmth,

every photo, saving the girls she wants

to remember, every small portion of paper

a folded page of herself.

Linda Annas Ferguson

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Ear Worm #1A

Posted in family, music, tagged Bill Griffin, Dorianne Laux, Duet, Jacar Press, Joseph Millar, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing on August 16, 2024| 11 Comments »

[with poems from Duet by Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar]

Listening to Paul Simon

Such a brave generation.

We marched onto the streets

in our T-shirts and jeans, holding

the hand of the stranger next to us

with a trust I can’t summon now,

our voices raised in song.

Our rooms were lit by candlelight,

wax dripping on the table, then

onto the floor, leaving dusty

starbursts we’d pop off

with the edge of a butter knife

when it was time to move.

But before we packed and drove

into the middle of our lives

we watched the leaves outside

the window shift in the wind

and listened to Paul Simon,

his tindery voice, then fell back

into our solitude, leveled our eyes

on the American horizon

that promised us everything

and knew it was never true:

smoke and cinders, insubstantial

as fingerprints on glass.

It isn’t easy to give up hope,

to escape a dream. We shed

our clothes and cut our hair,

our former beauty piled at our feet.

And still the music lived inside us,

whole worlds unmaking us in the dark,

so that sleeping and waking we heard

the train’s distant whistle, steel

trestles shivering across the land

that was still our in our bones and hearts,

its lone headlamp searching the weedy

stockyards, the damp, gray rags of fog.

Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar

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Here I am again, six years old this time, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the pinnacle of 1959 technology. I wind it up, carefully lay the 6-inch plastic disc on the little turntable (it’s bright yellow plastic, I will never forget that), and position the needle at the outer groove. The wind-up box is white and red and has a picture of Mickey Mouse grinning; it looks like Mickey’s arm is what holds the stylus. The needle itself juts from a hollow flat cylinder, sort of like a tuna can with perforations; the little holes are what transmit the sound. No electronics, no electricity involved.

I push a lever and the disk begins to rotate. The needle finds its groove (at least a decade before finding one’s groove will mean anything to me) and in between all the scratches from a hundred earlier renditions – music! The little record finishes, I lift the needle from where it’s begun making little whump whump sounds with each revolution, I place the needle back at groove one, and it starts all over again.

And even so my mother remained sane to her dying day.

As the years passed, Mom and Dad began to let me listen to their records on the Hi-Fi (mono, not stereo; Uncle Carlyle soldered it himself). It never seemed to drive them crazy to hear Peter and the Wolf or The Music Man a dozen times a day, or even Bobby Darin singing Mack the Knife. Hard core. Finally the big day – I was 11, I had saved my birthday money, I had laid awake at night tallying which of their songs were included: I bought my first LP, Introducing . . . The Beatles.

Introducing . . . is an anomaly in Beatles discography. It was released by Vee-Jay Records because Capitol/EMI had farted around about agreeing to a first USA Beatles album and Vee-Jay scooped them. Apparently it was only on the market for a year or so before the suits prevailed and forced them to cease and desist. Anyhow, I listened to that vinyl disc about a thousand times before I bought Beatles ‘65. In fact, I might just go slap it on the old turntable right now. Scratches and all. Please, please me!

❦

And that little yellow record? Easter Parade. Sixty-five years later I still find no evidence that there has ever been such a parade, but now the melody has wormed it’s way in again: “In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it . . .” And even so, my mother somehow remained sane.

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Mick Jagger (World Tour, 2008)

He stands on stage

after spot-lit stage, yowling

with his rubber mouth. If you

turn off the sound he’s

a ruminating bovine,

a baby’s face tasting his first

sour orange or spitting

spooned oatmeal out.

Rugose cheeks and beef

jerky jowls, shrubby hair

waxed, roughed up, arms

slung dome-ward, twisted

branches of a tough tree, knees

stomping high as his sunken chest.

Oddities aside, he’s a hybrid

of stamina and slouch,

tummy pooch, pouches under

his famous invasive rolling eyes.

He flutters like the pages

of a dirty book, doing

the sombrero dance, rocking

the microphone’s

round black foot, one hand

gripping the skinny metal rod,

the other pumping its victory fist

like he’s flushing a chain toilet.

Old as the moon and sleek

as a puma circling the herd.

The vein in this forehead

pops. His hands drop into fists.

he bows like a beggar then rises

like a monarch. Sir Mick,

our bony ruler. Jagger, slumping

off stage shining with sweat.

O please don’t die. Not now,

not ever, not yet.

Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar

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Uno Voce – when Sandy Beam rehearsed an a capella selection, he required us to blend our tone with each person singing near us until it was as if we all sang with one voice. Vibrato is anathema; sibilance is sin! Of course, Sandy would have been happiest if we had all been boy sopranos, but at least we could strive for that brilliant transparent evocation of light he desired.

Light and truth evoked by a single voice – not at all unlike these poems in Duet. They are each about music – Bo Diddley, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Cher. They build a portrait in layers of color, tone, and years, filled with the music that infuses our past and vibrates in our bones to create our present. And they are written by the duet of Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar, but the tones and melodies blend until we readers hear a single voice.

Not an ear worm in the bunch.

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Duet is one in the continuation of the Greatest Hits Series, originally conceived by editor Jennifer Bosveld at Pudding House Press in 2000 and acquired by Sammy Greenspan of Kattywampus Press in 2010. Jacar Press was asked to take over the series under the careful eye of series editor David Rigsbee in 2017. More about the book, the Series, and Jacar Press HERE