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[with 4 poems by Robert Morgan]
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Foxfire
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Bright lace on the darkness grows
heavy as the meat of lightning bugs
crushed on bark, rotting leaves.
*
Flakes of the moon stuck to spongy logs.
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Seconds sprinkled from a luminous dial on bearskin.
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Glow worms crawl all night in stump water
without moving. St. Elmo’s fire.
Foxfire swims like fish of the deepest troughs.
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City lights seen from a bomber.
*
the eyes of dead wood stare like jack-o-lanterns
burning last year’s sun
after a wet spell.
*
Coals of unlife,
chilly owls.
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Robert Morgan
from Collected Early Poems of Robert Morgan, Press 53, Winston-Salem NC; Carolina Classics Editions; © 2024
originally published in Zirconia Poems, Lillabulero Press; © 1969
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When I was a Junior in High School I was going steady with the daughter of our town’s elementary school librarian. If you think Linda’s house wasn’t filled to the rafters with books, you’ve got another think coming. When we were in college, still dating, I decided for Christmas I would build her bookshelves.
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During Junior High all the seventh grade boys took Home Ec with the girls and all the girls took Wood Shop with the boys. I got an A in sock darning and jello salad; on my woodworking project, a sculpture of a fish in walnut, I got a B+. Seven years later I gathered pine planks and 1×2’s in our basement to devise the Christmas present. Measure twice, cut once? Not so much as I recall, although I do remember wood glue, finishing nails, Minwax stain and varnish. Steel wool between coats. Linda seemed to like her present. Enough to marry me a year later and move the shelves to our 3rd floor apartment on Duke Street in Durham.
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That little book case was not fine cabinetry, but the shelves didn’t sag beneath Linda’s textbooks: history, art, religion, all the heaviest stuff. My design was basic, mostly a ladder, something we and the years might climb together, or maybe an altar where she could cherish and display her first and truest loves. It was good as I could make it, the only thing I knew to build.
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What did I know of all we and the years would build? The propagating books we’d carry home to become our family? Children grow and leave and carry their children back to you for an afternoon, but books are always close at hand to read to grandchildren like we read them to the grandchildren’s parents. A child is here for but a moment but bright spines and colored pages rest and wait for their return.
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My work was not to build a house, or a home, or even rooms, but simply room enough for something she would never finish loving. Every birthday, every holiday, another book; any old occasion is fit time to add to the welcome weight of pages. They fill the hours and our hearts – and I foresee there will never be quite enough shelves for all.
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Very Old Man
Hounds bay in his breath,
face a wilderness, eyes like frozen fountains.
He speaks from a foreign country, words drunk
with exhaustion, wornout
habits of the tongue.
His shoulders are small as a child’s.
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Sits on the cold peak watching us climb,
or doesn’t bother.
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Elegy
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Guess I’ll light a rag out of here, he said
and blindness rose in his open eyes.
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Tilted chessmen, tombstones graze on the hill,
drag shadows at the setting moon.
Eighty years go down
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like a ship.
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Robert Morgan
from Collected Early Poems of Robert Morgan, Press 53, Winston-Salem NC; Carolina Classics Editions; © 2024
originally published in Zirconia Poems, Lillabulero Press; © 1969
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Saturday, September 15, 2001: Robert Morgan has managed to travel to Southern Pines to read at Weymouth Center before the North Carolina Poetry Society. So healing, so encouraging to us fellow mortals; I remember his tone and demeanor more than I remember his words, but many of his words have never left me. Actually, his words have grown in me and flourished. Audubon’s Flute – I have to pull that one out and read it every Earth Day.
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Audubon in the summer woods
by the afternoon river sips
his flute, his fingers swimming on
the silver as silver notes pour
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by the afternoon river, sips
and fills the mosquito-note air
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So many notes before and after that morning in Weymouth Woods, so many words. No wonder that when I learn that Press 53 has collected Robert Morgan’s first four books of poetry into a single volume, I hear the silver tones calling me. In the lyrical introduction to Collected Early Poems of Robert Morgan, Robert M. West shares this quotation: Asked, ‘What is the highest praise that could be given to a poet’s work, southern or otherwise?’ Morgan responded, “ ‘You must read this.’ The greatest honor is to be read.”
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And so we shall read and honor Robert Morgan. I am picking up his book every day for the next several weeks, and we will see where the music leads us.
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Collected Early Poems of Robert Morgan, with an introduction by Robert M. West (co-editor of Robert Morgan: Essays on the Life and Work), is a Carolina Classics Edition from Press 53, available HERE.
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Distances
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Mind wanders down the long slope of trees
like small cat fur
turning blue in the midday sunlight of December
into a short valley
with only a cabin and a juniper
and one horse nibbling the dried grass
around an Indian grave.
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Clear through the distance of memory
into the cabin where my great grandmother, a bride
sits by the fire smoking her clay pipe
and watching through the door the gap in the mountains
where her man may come any moment
with gun on shoulder and quail swinging
and steps so rhythmic
they leave tracks in the mind.
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Robert Morgan
from Collected Early Poems of Robert Morgan, Press 53, Winston-Salem NC; Carolina Classics Editions; © 2024
originally published in Zirconia Poems, Lillabulero Press; © 1969
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
I’m so glad to hear that Morgan’s early poetry is back in print! This sampling is very fine. A few decades ago, I copyedited one of his prose works for Algonquin, a romp of a tale, “Hinterlands,” I think. He once said that he had never left the Appalachians, just moved further north: from North Carolina up to Cornell.
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Thanks, Maura, I like that quotation. Glad you stopped by . . . — B
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Thank you, Bill, for reminding us of the beauty and depth of Robert Morgan’s poetry. I share your memories of that Sept. 15, 2001 NCPS meeting, Robert’s generosity, how in our collective grief, he helped us begin to heal. A special day of poetry and friends.
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Very true, Friend, and thank you for reminding me of the date! —B
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[…] Trunk & Thicket (1978). . Read additional selections from this new book at last week’s VERSE & IMAGE. . . ❦ ❦ ❦ . Whippoorwill . The dead call at sundown from their places on […]
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