V E R S E and I M A G E

[with poems from PINESONG 2023, NC Poetry Society Anthology]

 

Preservation

Even with the old house gone, ground smoothed
and seeded, other centuries erased,
we tell of Grandmother’s death
in a bedroom right about here.
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Tell how the kitchen floor sagged
as our mother, age five, made biscuits
afraid she would be spanked
if the didn’t rise to suit her mother.
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Tell how the old woman at last
spoke kindly to her only daughter
who sacrificed for weeks to buy the dress
her mother would wear only in her coffin.

We never knew this grandmother, just

that our mother retold those tales never understanding

how a person can forsake life itself.

What to do with that choice?

We remember the stories, pass them down

with our own embroidered feelings

in the fabric. We tell of Ethel’s first husband,

our grandfather, dead at thirty-six,

who planted orchards and a vineyard.

We visit him in apples and pears,

retelling what became of his children,

what his absence has meant.

We even imagine the coconut meringue pie

served at Grandmother’s wake,

toasted and dotted with sugar pearls –

so good it made mourners glad to be alive.

Our mother smiled as we licked the story from our lips.

And each of learned to make this pie

just as Mother taught us, preserving

something sweet from every dark remembrance.

I wish a kindly wind could blow away

the hurts of ages past, resettle the ashes

in pleasing ways, retell the stories with humor,

with morals to live by and cherish,

but here we are, generations later, quibbling

whether families live and grow by story.

What of fact? Genealogy provided dates

and places, names and maps.

The great grandfather who fought on both sides

in the Civil War, the uncle lost in Korea,

the orphaned grandfathers indentured to farmers.

Mother already had Alzheimer’s, told me,

pointing to Daddy, Oh, honey, I can’t remember

Perhaps siblings never agree, once parents are gone.

Now we struggle to hold onto something vital:

that places hold the sounds and scents

of lives passed there, that stout maples

and great-grandfather pecan trees remember

their youth, that all that ever was still is,

that what has been preserved remains,

a family farm in Yadkin County, now

in its last iteration. Chant home like an incantation.

Weave a thread of truth in the weft.

Is it enough to sustain family?

To embody story kindly?

And how to teach future generations

to savor what they refuse to know?

A storm comes up, the wind and rain

sweeping the fields we work, the same

ground our great great-grandfathers tilled.

We shriek, wanting to run away,

and Mother lets us go. She stays, leaning on her hoe,

takes off her straw hat and lifts her face to the rain,

a benediction. Grace, acceptance, story.

This is my Something to preserve.

Poet Laureate Award, Pinesong 2023

How would you describe this little bird we’re hearing? Squeaky? About one octave below dog whistle? Here’s a big clue: couplets, always couplets, each longer phrase built from couplets. Peaches, Peaches, Sweety, Sweety, See Me!

He’s perched at the edge. (Reminder to self, look higher than it sounds like I need to.) There he is, right at the edge of the big maple where the leaves peter out until we might actually have a good chance of spotting him. The edge of the treeline between cow pasture and copse: his preferred habitat is at the very edge, securing both cover for nest and forage for seeds & spiders. And at the edge of survival, on which side is he perched, thrive or decline?

This Indigo Bunting and his two rivals nearby, all singing non-stop, flew 1,200 miles from Central America to arrive here a few weeks ago. He has found this little patch of Mountains-to-Sea Trail in Surry County very much to his liking, rural fragmentation, edge habitat at the merger of field and scrub. He and his cohorts are thriving. There are currently most likely many more Indigo Buntings covering a much larger geography than were here in North America before the colonists arrived. Last Saturday I ran my annual USGS Breeding Bird Survey count, my twenty-eighth run since 1995 (50 designated stops, count every bird seen or heard in three minutes). With rare exceptions, each year Indigo Bunting tops the individual tally. Despite woodlots harvested, farms planted with new homes, over-tended monoculture lawns, Bunting still finds enough fallow, neglected, brushy edge to make a living.

And perhaps these Indigo Buntings also top the count of those seen and heard because they are such indefatigable singers, all day long, song after song, in every weather.

There are winners and losers whenever humans move into the neighborhood. We planted nesting boxes and brought Bluebirds back from the brink. We tore down the woods and let our (F-word) cats range free and I’ve only heard two Whip-poor-wills since 2007. Some species seek out the edge habitat we create in our diced up rural landscape, some will even come to our feeders, but as I read through my yearly USGS data I wonder how much longer I’ll still be hearing vireos, tanagers, wood warblers. So many on the edge.

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Poetry must seek out habitat where it can grow and thrive. When 150 listeners gathered at Weymouth Center in Southern Pines two weeks ago to hear poems read aloud from the newest issue of Pinesong, the ground of creativity burst its constrained borders into fresh and fertile fields. The North Carolina Poetry Society sponsors sixteen annual contests for individual poems, with a wide diversity of requirements, themes, forms, and prompts. The fruit of that diversity, the poems of the winners, is collected each year into this single volume. We open the book to read like walking a trail that winds from one discovery to the next.

Poetry needs this edge, this sharp stab of novelty and this precarious but visible perch of invention and insight. An exploration, an awakening, a fulfillment. I am always glad to hear a song I can recognize. I am even more filled with joy to learn a new song.

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The world misunderstands:

The stained designs of my homeland

Are not a fashion statement, but a

Statement of my mind.

People ask – they can’t help it

Might as well have committed

Bloody murder for the way they stare.

Try to act unaware when I’ve been caught red-handed.

Eyes like magnets to the henna; I wish I could disguise

The distaste on their faces but it’s lace

In every look they send, cant pretend it’s easy to withstand

They could never understand . . .

Because how do I tell them it’s my one way of feeling visible?

Oh, how I want to be seen. Just

Picture the scene:

The brown girl to dark for passing but

Too light to avoid them asking about whether I’m Mexican

Or next of kin to become the chief of a tribe but who actually

Comes from the place even Columbus couldn’t find.

Imagine being stranded at sea: alone and lost the

Ocean a pounding current of blows, it

Beats you and cheats you and goes to show

How scars can sprout

Without being sown.

The henna paste soothes the pain.

Though replaced with stains the scars remain.

A silent scream to the world around me

I will be know in this country!

Until then, inked flowers will bloom along my palm, vines

Shall curl around my fingers in song.

Let this garden surround you

With its beauty; it belongs.

8th Grade, Cary Academy

Mary Chilton Award Honorable Mention, Pinesong 2023

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Pinesong is the annual publication of contest winning poems by the North Carolina Poetry Society, founded in 1932. Pinesong 2023 is Number 59, edited by Sherry Pedersen-Thrasher with assistance from Joan Barasovska. This year’s volume is dedicated to David Radavich, former NCPS President and steadfast supporter of poetry and the arts.

You can learn more about North Carolina Poetry Society and its contests, plus read previous years’ editions of Pinesong . . . here.

If you would like to purchase Pinesong ($12, postage included) please contact NCPS Vice President of Membership Joan Barasovska: msjoan9[at]gmail[dot]com

A free issue of Pinesong is available to all NCPS members in good standing who request ($2 mailing expense). Please contact Joan, as above.

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Unable to stand in our hillside orchard,

too weak to swing a mattock or to wrestle

with dirt, my dad wants to plant peach trees.

For him, I tear the earth open.

Rocks bleed out from the poor mountain soil,

and I unwrap swaddled peach roots.

Before I scrape the dirt back and tamp it down,

I return the largest rock under the young roots,

a surrogate for what I fear. I bury it back,

imagine the roots encircling the rock,

enclosing it, building from its foundation.

Like the hard stone buried in the sweetest fruit.

from Tamp, Mercer University Press, © 2023

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Needful things have a way of turning up. A chance word of assurance from a friend at church. An old photo misplaced and rediscovered. A new book.

I’ve just called Dad to let him know I won’t be visiting tomorrow. Last week’s COVID has relapsed, and even though I caught it from him in the first place I don’t want to risk returning the gift. Maybe my sister can drive down from Asheville and refill his medication trays. Maybe a neighbor can help him pick up the car he will never again drive from the service department. Maybe all the little errands will get done some way or another until I can see him and Mom next week sometime. Something will turn up.

Indeed. The needful thing that has turned up for me this week is Denton Loving’s new book, Tamp. Denton’s grief at the loss of his father is both gentle and vicious. Both cutting and sweet. Subtle, surprising, pervasive. But it’s how he expresses loss that is needful for me this week. He recalls and describes the many things he had done alongside his father, the toil and the joy. He describes the tasks he must now do without his father. I feel like I’m walking that very path not far behind him.

I sit down and force myself to reflect. Push aside for a moment the aggravation and exhaustion of caregiving. Who was my father? Who is he now? Who are we together? I don’t want to summarize our years under the same roof with an offhand quip, “He didn’t like my long hair”; he doesn’t even comment on it now. Lately I labor with the frustration of all the capacities he’s lost (but struggles to admit he’s lost). Instead let me paint for myself an image of his presence throughout the twists and turns of all our decades – a steady beacon of approval. Sometimes distant, but never dim.

Let me be thankful for the engineer, salesman, executive who still covers the dining room table with stacks of lists. Let me acknowledge how tough it must be for him each time he has to hand over another essential task to me – thanks, Dad, for letting me drive you everywhere, keep up with your prescriptions, clean out the recesses of the fridge. Let me set aside my own to-do lists when we’re together, if only for a morning’s cool respite on the patio.

Let me prepare now, Dad, for the day when I won’t have you to take care of. Or to take care of me. Let me appreciate each day until then.

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When I first learned of Denton Loving’s book and placed my order, I was curious about the title. I didn’t select which poems to feature today simply because you’ll find that word within them, but you will. As I re-read all the poems, I think I’m discovering that even without tamp explicitly visible within their lines, each one still speaks to the word’s theme. To create something solid and lasting; to be conscientious and never leave something half-done; to pay attention. And neither you nor I ever really tamp the earth in finality and just walk away. We are only continuing our journey, from fence post upright and steady, from headstone and grave, into the next day and the next. An unbroken genealogy of love.

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my father didn’t believe and didn’t wait

for holy intercession. He mislaid his gloves

faster than his temper. He wasn’t careless,

though I never knew him to lay hands

on the tool he needed when he needed it.

So he bought pair after pair, suede

cowhide fit to stretch barbed wire. Still,

he usually worked with only one hand

sheathed and sometimes then

with the fingers blown out, each digit

ruptured by the snag of steel points

reaching next to rip open skin.

Now, I find his leather fingers cupping air

like wren nests, lingering in buckets,

on shed shelves, on the aged oak floor

of the barn loft, in the midst of a task,

maybe a pair of nails within reach

as if he’ll return when he finds his hammer.

from Tamp, Mercer University Press, © 2023

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the grave digger says after I show him

the place to bury my father.

I take in the view as if this valley

is what he’ll see for eternity.

Down the hill, children play

outside the elementary school.

Sheep pasture around the cemetery.

I’d never wondered why some graves swell

and some settle and sag

but the grave digger’s words stay with me.

He taps the clay above my sleeping dad,

leveling the damp ground

just as the man in the casket

taught me to tamp around wooden posts

to make a new fence last,

packing the dirt and rocks

so wire is pulled taut, forced to hold tight

for at least a generation,

those rhythmic strikes a refrain

for all those who take pride in a task well done,

those men who work the earth –

the fence builder erecting his monuments,

the grave digger and all he lays to rest.

from Tamp, Mercer University Press, © 2023

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