V E R S E and I M A G E

That Isn’t Me

December 6, 2024 by GriffinPoetry

[with 3 poems by Cheryl Wilder]

Anything That Happens

Until I was twenty, I believed anything

wouldn’t happen to me.

Walking from the car,

leaving you behind,

sirens whining louder as they closed on us;

I didn’t understand anything

had just happened.

People said it wasn’t my fault

and for reassurance,

It could have been me. But

I heard what they didn’t say.

I’m so glad it wasn’t.

Cheryl Wilder

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It’s 1990 and my kids are cruising toward teenagerdom. Every week in the throw-away medical journals that cross my desk there’s at least one article with a title like We Never Even Suspected, or Why Me? The doctor or doctor’s spouse laments about their teen who is (pick one): flunking out of college; a closet alcoholic; pregnant out of wedlock; addicted to Percocet. That becomes the one article I am compelled to read before assigning the journal to the round file. It’s a solid principal of statistics: if it happened to them it’s that much less likely to happen to me.

Because today in 1990 my kids are, well, not perfect but above average. They are so good. And I am so good. Whatever that other doctor did to cause his child to go wrong, I would never do that. Because somehow at this interchange along the cosmic highway I am totally in charge of (and totally to blame for) all the choices my kids are making and will make.

And responsible, of course, for all the rest, now and forever after. Are my parents happy? Is my wife fulfilled? Are my grandkids smart? Is there crabgrass in the flower bed? (Well, maybe I am responsible for that one.) Don’t worry, I am not poised here to write an article titled Everything That Would Have Been Better if I Were Better. That’s between me and 4 AM.

Instead, I’m attempting a more compelling practice. A practice without textbooks or certification exams. One that requires nothing but offers everything. A practice never free from pain but sometimes tinged with joy. All that this practice endeavors is to prod a slight change in phraseology, poke a minor shift in frame of reference. When I learn of your misfortune, when you tell me about your pain, when I recognize that you are suffering, I will try my best not to say to myself I’m glad that isn’t me, and instead I will say, That is me.

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Xing

I don’t know how I brought a child

into the world when I can’t reconcile

if crashing a car and a friend’s skull

is karmic debt created

or payment for a past immoral act.

I open doors and say thank you and do not try

to behave in a way I cannot afford.

There’s no barometer, no way to know

if the pendulum is swinging

away or toward, how many pay-it-forwards it takes

before I break even at the gambling table.

I cold blend in with the pure

if it weren’t for the scars that don’t fade

no matter how many turtles I save,

so am I all that surprised

when my little boy tells me

of his palpable fear

to cross the street.

Cheryl Wilder

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Sostenuto – a musical notation indicating a passage sustained to the utmost. Unrelenting. Imagine a violin’s piercing note, almost impossibly high and rising, horsehair glissando across the E-string. Now it’s joined in harmony by the A-string, discordant, the two dancing and warring with each other. They weave pitch and volume but never rest, sostenuto. You lean forward on the edge of your hard seat, your teeth are on edge, you want, you need, you crave desperately some resolution.

Cheryl Wilder sustains tension throughout sixty-four pages to the ultimate climax of Anything That Happens. Her story is too piercing: one tastes blood and tears. She lives every moment with that high, sharp note, days and years of guilt and pain – she has irretrievably damaged her friend – and then also weaves discordant disharmonies from her cold relationship with her mother and her non-relationship with her father. More than once I had to lay the book aside and breathe deeply to slow my pounding heart.

And more than once I resisted the urge to flip pages to the end. Who doesn’t crave resolution? What follows in this post today is the book’s penultimate poem. Some hurt can never be removed. No one can return to the moment before anything happens. Scars are just that, permanent marks and reminders of pain. How do any of us go on living? How? I invite you to enter the music of this book, its atonality and discord, one poem after another, until you reach its final page.

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Anything That Happens by Cheryl Wilder is a Tom Lombardo Poetry Selection and is available at Press 53. Among other awards, the book was a finalist for the 2022 Brockman-Campbell Award of the North Carolina Poetry Society; read an additional poem from the collection and celebrate 90 years of NCPS HERE.

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Home Safe

Friends visit the hospital

where I am not wanted. It’s just as well

that I stay in bed, carve poplar

into a shield I can place between

myself and others, learn you wake

from a coma by the drop

of my manslaughter charge. Years pass

before I hear your voice again,

asking me to lunch over the phone, your mother

telling me I am only allowed in her home

because you found my number

on your own. You reach for my arm

to steady your walk, lean close

to see me in focus, your smile wide

on one side of your face, brightened even more

at the restaurant when you flirt with the waiter.

That is enough, to see a glimpse of the friend

I once knew, but then you reach cross the table

for my hands, look at me to say

what you defied your mother to say,

It’s not your fault. Over and again,

I forgive you. You can’t remember

the night I cannot forget, but you know

your words are my salvation.

There is no talk of next time.

You get out of the car and walk

into the house, back to your mother

who can breathe once again.

Cheryl Wilder

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Posted in family, Imagery, poetry | Tagged Anything That Happens, Bill Griffin, Cheryl Wilder, family, imagery, nature photography, NC Poetry Society, NC Poets, NCPS, poetry, Press 53, Southern writing | 7 Comments »

Generosity

November 29, 2024 by GriffinPoetry

[with 3 poems by Terri Kirby Erickson]

In the Midst of Grief, a Heron

Healing begins with the blue heron hunting

in the frigid water of a shallow pond.

Wings folded, neck tucked into its feathered

breast, it stands motionless in a shelter

made of branches, alone save for its shadow.

What would it hurt to loosen our grip

on grief? To allow the soft gray-blue

of a heron’s body to soothe our eyes, tired

of shedding tears? This day will never come

again and the heron will soon fly. Already,

the light is fading, taking with it all the time

that has ever passed. Let this peace soak

into our skin like medicine, remain with us

long after the heron is gone.

Terri Kirby Erickson

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Northing is ordinary – not condensation on a pane

of glass – that streak of sunlight, yellow

as lemons, in the neighbor’s backyard. Trees

are rustling tender new leaves, and our lawn

is as thick as a wool rug. Even the scent of coffee

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

hides something that hurts, even as we call to one

another, good morning, good morning –

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.

Terri Kirby Erickson

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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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Terri Kirby Erickson

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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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Posted in family, Imagery, poetry | Tagged Bill Griffin, family, imagery, nature photography, NC Poets, Night Talks, poetry, Press 53, Southern writing, Terri Kirby Erickson | 8 Comments »

Wanting to Be a Forest

November 22, 2024 by GriffinPoetry

[with 3 poems by Frank X Walker]

Grove

This was the first time

we really look at each other

and not be able to tell

who master the cruelest

who sorrow the deepest

who ground been the hardest to hoe.

We was lined up like oaks in the yard

standing with our chins up,

proud chests out, shoulders back,

and already nervous stomachs in.

We was a grove wanting to be a forest,

ready to see what kind of wood we made from.

The only thing taller or straighter

than us be the boards

holding up the barracks at our backs,

though most our feets feel pigeon-toed

and powerful sore

from marching back and forth, every day,

for what seem like more miles

than we walked to get here.

It take more than pride to stand still

‘neath these lil’ hats not made for shade.

Soldiering ain’t easy, but it sure beats

the bloody leaves off a bondage.

Frank X Walker

[based on a photo taken at Camp Nelson, Kentucky, of troops standing at attention outside the Colored Soldiers Barrack]

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1861 One month after Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, Kentucky’s Governor issues a formal proclamation of neutrality, but he retreats from any denunciation of slavery, which he believes is not a “moral, social, or political evil.” Four months later Kentucky decides to end neutrality and enters the Civil War on the side of the Union; 200 delegates vote to secede from the rest of the state and form a separate Confederate Kentucky with Bowling Green as capital.

1862 Abraham Lincoln’s EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION declares freedom for all enslaved persons in states which are in rebellion against the United States. This leaves slaves in Union-aligned Kentucky still the property of their masters, however.

1864 The U.S. government’s progress towards making universal emancipation a war aim has caused support for the war and the government among White Kentuckians to dwindle. Military recruitment ebbs. On June 13, U.S. SPECIAL ORDER NO. 20 allows enslaved persons to enlist in the U.S. Army without their owner’s consent and be granted their freedom, the first pathway to legal emancipation in Kentucky. That summer and fall, 14,000 Black men enlist.

Only Black men who are fit for military duty are emancipated, however. If they are ineligible, they are returned to enslavement, and there is no offer of freedom for their families. Camp Nelson, Kentucky’s largest recruitment and training base, becomes a haven for refugees from slavery, whether escaping from Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina or arriving with their newly enlisted Kentucky husbands or fathers. Freedom seekers from the South are considered “contraband of war” and granted freedom, but slaves of White Kentuckians remain legal property of their masters with no formal protections.

On November 22, 1864, in the midst of a winter storm, Brigadier General Speed S. Frye orders all refugees surrounding Camp Nelson expelled and their shacks destroyed. Of 400 people immediately displaced without shelter or recourse, at least 102 die of exposure and starvation. Frye’s order is quickly rescinded by his superiors in Kentucky but headlines cause an outcry across the States. On December 15, Adjutant General L. Thomas issues ORDERS NO. 29 to require that “all camps enlisting Negroes provide suitable housing and provisions for their families.”

Within months, the War Department creates the Home for Refugees at Camp Nelson. On March 3, 1865, the US Congress passes laws to emancipate the wives and children of United States Colored Troops soldiers.

Camp Nelson, Kentucky, is now a National Monument, and includes a memorial obelisk to honor the 102 African Americans who perished in The Expulsion.

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We Will Prove Ourselves Men

++ Sewn on the regimental flag

++ of the 127th U.S. Colored Troops

I don’t look the stars and stripes

nor the eagle for mustard

like the white officers

and some of my free brothers do.

I think on the slender fingers

that stitched our proud colors

snapping in the wind,

the same steady hands

that last held me close,

and pray they hold me again.

That’s why I’m willing

to trade bullets in a cloud.

Some confuse our bravery and courage

with our love for our women,

but many of us just eyeing that flag

and trying our best to get back home.

Frank X Walker

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My Grandpop died when he was 67 and I was 5. Our families lived hundreds of miles apart – we in New York, then Tennessee, he and Nana in North Carolina – so we visited only two or three times a year. I can’t recall the sound of his voice, I’m not sure if he ever hugged me, but I know a story about him and me that I have retold myself so many times that it is tangibly real. Totally, unquestioningly, personally real:

We are in the dining room of his house that overlooks Bogue Sound. He, a surgeon, is holding my fingers in his. In the pressure of his fingers I am aware of the bones beneath my skin, and he is teaching me: Carpals, Metacarpals, Phalanges.

I have many photos of Grandpop, his enigmatic smile. I have copies of articles he published, things he crafted with his hands, an oil painting. I have photos he took of me, even an old 35 mm. silent movie. But the most real, the most present, is this story I keep and hold. Perhaps the artifacts helped me create the story. Perhaps hearing the story as it was told to me by Nana and Mom. However the story comes into being, into life, it brings reality with it.

So it is with Frank X Walker and his poems in Load in Nine Times. Frank was already deeply involved in resurrecting and creating the stories of Black Civil War soldiers in Kentucky and their families, using scant artifacts to create short biographies and allow these men and women to live (for a project at Reckoning.com). Then he thought to ask the archivist to research a possible relative of his own. And the sky opened.

Frank’s dedication for the collection of some 100 poems reads thus: For my ancestors, Mary and Randal Edelen, 125th U.S. Colored Infantry and Elvira and Henry Clay Walker, 12th U.S. Colored Troops Heavy Artillery. These folks speak and are joined by dozens of others who lived and suffered and sometimes triumphed. Through poetry they have all come to life, along with the middle decades of 19th century Kentucky. Slave and slave owner, soldier and widow, parent of despair and parent of hope – Frank has honored them and exposed them, judged them and sometimes forgiven them, given them sharp tongues and sharp features and brought their years into sharp, sharp focus.

And our years as well. What did I know about Civil War Kentucky, USA? As soon as I laid down the book I had to know more. More! Frank educates with timelines and resources but his greatest gift is to enlighten me, in the sense of casting light into dark corners where I had never thought to look. When I discover online some of the photographs he must have used for his own inspiration, those slightly blurred faces now suddenly stand out to me – real men, real women. We each owe it to ourselves to continue to tell our stories and to listen to new ones. Somehow, in this harsh and enervating world, perhaps this is the way we will become more real to each other.

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Read the excellent interview with Frank X Walker by Jacqueline Allen Trimble as she explores with him the creation of Load in Nine Times, in the Oct 19, 2024 edition of Salvation South.

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A Black Father Dreams a Son

++ Brig. Gen. Charles Young,

++ 9th U.S. Cavalry Regiment

It was twelve miles to Maysville and the Ohio River and another

ten to Ripley. A runaway could escape from Mays Lick,

at night, head north, follow the smell of the river and make

the entire distance and crossing by sunrise. A determine one,

on horseback, like Gabriel Young, could make it in half the time.

Ignoring racism at West Point was easier knowing

my father survived slavery. He joined the 5th and risked his life

so our people would know freedom. I risk mine to protect it.

If his sacrifice and commitment freed my body, my mother’s books

free my mind. Her skirt was my first classroom.

Every big and small thing I’ve done began at their feet.

Though born into slavery in Kentucky, I learned to play piano

and violin, speak French and german, before becoming a teacher,

before graduating from West Point, before a career in the military,

and public service.

Growing up in Ripley showed me what this country could be.

What my parents instilled in me, and Wilberforce proved it.

I am America’s promise, my mother’s song,

and the reason my father had every right to dream.

Frank X Walker

[Charles young, born in 1864 into slavery to Gabriel Young and Armenta Bruen in Mays Lick, Kentucy, was the first Black man to achieve the rank of colonel in the Unites States Army, and the highest ranking Black officer in the regular army until his death in 1922. In 2022, in recognition of his exemplary service and barriers he faced due to racism, he was posthumously promoted to brigadier general.]

[these addenda are taken from the Author’s notes]

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