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[with 3 poems by Terri Kirby Erickson]
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In the Midst of Grief, a Heron
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Healing begins with the blue heron hunting
in the frigid water of a shallow pond.
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Wings folded, neck tucked into its feathered
breast, it stands motionless in a shelter
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made of branches, alone save for its shadow.
What would it hurt to loosen our grip
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on grief? To allow the soft gray-blue
of a heron’s body to soothe our eyes, tired
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of shedding tears? This day will never come
again and the heron will soon fly. Already,
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the light is fading, taking with it all the time
that has ever passed. Let this peace soak
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into our skin like medicine, remain with us
long after the heron is gone.
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Terri Kirby Erickson
from Night Talks, New & Selected Poems, Press 53, Winston-Salem NC; © 2023
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Mike and Johnny Slattery would have been there, from three doors down on Marcia Road. My little brother Bobby, of course. I can picture the house right now as if standing there, the shape of our living room in that L-shaped ranch in the square-grid new-built neighborhood in Memphis. There’s the door that leads into Mom’s kitchen, to the right the little hallway to the front door, outside another ten steps to the carport and driveway where we played marbles or rode our bikes down to the street. Beside me is the corner cupboard Nana gave us, before me the cherry table Dad broke last year when he fell.
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Most everything else from my nine-year old birthday party has faded. How many other boys Mom invited and gathered in from the homes around, what kind of cake, the candles and singing – all now clouded and indistinct.
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One moment, though, remains untarnished. It’s been polished these sixty years hence by recollection and reflection. Mom thought to include one boy the rest of us didn’t play with very often. Maybe there was something a little different about him. To this day I can’t tell you his name. As the other boys present their gifts, brightly wrapped in colorful paper, he gives me a big smile and hands me his – a lump of crumpled tin foil. I peel it apart. Inside are six quarters.
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I don’t remember any of the other presents I received that day. Why has this one stuck with me? I can testify I was surely no less selfish and self-absorbed than any other nine-year old, but with some vague child’s awareness I realized in that moment the boy was giving me all he had. Maybe he didn’t have a mom with time to go to the store or wrap a present. Maybe he’d never been invited to a birthday party. Today, writing these lines, I still feel a strange heaviness when I think about his gesture, a forlorn sadness but also a rich touch of awe and gratitude.
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That smile – he was so happy to hand me that gift. From him to me. Thank you, thank you, little boy.
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The Letter
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Northing is ordinary – not condensation on a pane
of glass – that streak of sunlight, yellow
as lemons, in the neighbor’s backyard. Trees
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are rustling tender new leaves, and our lawn
is as thick as a wool rug. Even the scent of coffee
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wafting from the kitchen is a miracle,
a woman walking her little dog down the sidewalk,
its leash as taught as rigging. Yet, every house
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hides something that hurts, even as we call to one
another, good morning, good morning –
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our faces open as a letter lying on a table, the kind
that makes our hands shake when we find it
in the mailbox, that we only read once.
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Terri Kirby Erickson
from Night Talks, New & Selected Poems, Press 53, Winston-Salem NC; © 2023
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We can be generous giving money and things, and this week in the USA we generously give thanks, but where else does generosity slip in? Generous with advice, oh my yes aren’t we all, and woe to those who don’t take it. Generous with encouragement and acceptance, and who gets to decide what’s worthy of encouragement and what acceptable? Apparently it’s actually quite easy to be giving without being generous at all. We’ve had to make a rule at our house to keep the after-school peace: Pappy doesn’t try to eat Amelia’s snacks. Last week, though, Amelia had a sweet she really wanted to finish herself but offered me a bite. Generosity – it doesn’t have much to do with deserving or keeping score; it has more to do with making sacrifices and sharing the joy.
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I think of myself as a reasonably generous person, and then I read Terri Kirby Erickson’s poetry. These people, these moments remembered and shared, these talks over breakfast or long into the night that leave each speaker that much richer, these also leave me richer, fuller, more human. In Night Talks, Terri presents about sixty new poems along with grateful selections from her six previous books, combined and swirled like the best layer cake you ever set fork to, perfect for morning on the porch with coffee or with evening lamplight leaning back into the sofa.
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After returning to this book over and over, I can finally name the spirit that suffuses Terri’s work and that warms the reader – generosity. There is harm and hazard in Terri’s writer’s life, there is grief and loss and no denying them. These poems look into the darkness and discover light, even if only the pinpricks of stars overhead. These poems never overlook a radiant dawn – they always expect it. And it doesn’t hurt a bit that Terri is the impresario of image, the titan of the turn of phrase: summer wants [to] / hitch a ride on the back of a broad-winged hawk / to places where the stars feel like chips of ice / sliding down September’s throat.
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How does her poetry restore and replenish its deeply generous spirit on every new page? Try on this bit of spiritual etymology: From gratitude comes generosity; from generosity comes giving. With recollection and reflection, let me polish up my gratitude. Let’s see where it take me.
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Moon Walk
++++ for my brother
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Sunburned, bellies full of fried pompano, sweet
corn, and garden tomatoes purchased at a roadside
stand manned by a farmer with more fingers than
teeth—my family huddled around a rented black
and white TV set the shape and size of a two-slot
toaster, watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
hop like bunnies on the rough surface of the same
waxing moon that shone through our beach cottage
windows. I was eleven years old, bucktoothed and
long-legged—my brother a year younger and, most
days, followed his big sister like Mercury orbiting
the sun. Mom and Dad sat side by side on the faux
leather, sand-dusted couch, and Grandma, never one
to hold still for long, stood by her grandson’s hard-
backed chair, her hair a nimbus of silver from the soft
glow of a television screen where a miracle unfolded
before our eyes. But grown men wearing fishbowls
on their heads, bouncing from one crater to the next,
seemed less real to my brother and me than Saturday
morning cartoons. And all the while, we could hear
waves slapping the surf and wind whipping across
the dunes—and the taste on every tongue was salt
and more salt. So when I picture the summer of ’69
at Long Beach, North Carolina, as history rolled out
the red carpet leading to a future none of us could
foresee, my heart breaks like an egg against the rim
of what comes next. But let’s pretend for the length
of this poem, that my brother’s blood remains safe
inside his veins, Grandma’s darkening mole as benign
as a monastery full of monks, and our parents, unable
to imagine the depth and breadth of grief. Here, there
is only goodness and mercy, the light of a million stars,
and the moon close enough now for anyone to touch.
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Terri Kirby Erickson
from Night Talks, New & Selected Poems, Press 53, Winston-Salem NC; © 2023
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Night Talks, New & Selected Poems, by Terri Kirby Erickson, is available at Press 53 in Winston-Salem NC along with five other collections by Terri.
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
Thanks, Jenny! ---B