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[with 3 poems by Jane Shlensky]
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Balance
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Each morning Granny hobbles to the spring
uphill two miles with buckets in her hands
through woods now thick with frost, limbs cleared of leaves.
And over rocks almost atop a hill
behind her house, she sees the water gush,
and, slow with age, she stoops to clear away
the leaves and sticks that clot the pulses’ rush,
and, cracked cup in her hand, she dips into
“sweet water” as she calls it, gathered wild
as honey in abandoned rees, and pours
the nectar into metal milking pails
to carry down the mountain, arms held far
from hips and sides, all tense – as pugilists
might hold their arms, quite low with hands in fists.
But her fists grip the metal handle’s cut
into her palms, as water weighs her down
and down the well-worn path toward her house.
I offer her a new artesian well,
but she just laughs at me and shakes her head.
I ask if I may carry home the spring
for her, but she denies she wants the help
and says it gives her reason for a walk
among the trees on any given day
and carrying two buckets makes her sure
of foot and balanced in a world that’s not.
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Jane Shlensky
from Barefoot on Gravel, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, KY; © 2016
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❦ ❦ ❦
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I hate my anger more than I hate vomiting. The dead sick inevitability as it rises, how it makes my hands go cold and clenches my jaw. Disorienting, paralyzing rational thought. I am not going to let that anger out.
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People tell you it’s best if you do. You have to let go of your anger. Maybe they’re right, because while it’s rising I don’t even see it coming, I don’t know to call it anger, I have no warning or defense that might prevent the stupid things I will do or the hurtful things I will say. I am afraid of the anger so I run from it before it can get me. Running, stumbling, I usually fall. Anger blasts me off balance.
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Linda and I are sitting in the car. We had thought to take a walk in the gardens but now I’ve picked a fight with her, I can’t even recall about what. Linda has never let me get away with anything – I say this with honest, grudging admiration – and she says something now that jars me: “So is this what it’s going to be, then?” She is seeing something I can’t see. I admit it. I’m so confused, I tell her. And so she pushes me to relive the last couple of hours, ticking over the balance sheet – frustration at last night’s botched meeting, undercurrent of worried anticipation for tomorrow, niggling mis-steps and course changes this morning that had me snapping at a friend, patience evaporating to hot steam. Little angers mounting, not let out.
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At last she wants to give me some justification. “Anyone would feel that way.” Not this time. True or not, I’m not buying that line. I’ve used it a hundred times to tamp down the anger, cover it and hide it. I don’t actually gain much insight into all this until much later, but there is one best way to regain some balance. To let anger’s own entropy cool it down to nothing. Sitting in the car next to Linda, I open up and own it. I said and did things that hurt people; I am responsible. I am sorry. I’m not happy with myself or the situation, but at least the two of us are finding enough balance to begin our walk after all.
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❦
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It hurts to walk barefoot on gravel. When I first met Linda, she and her sisters went barefoot all summer long. It was nothing for them to walk a mile or two on those tar-and-gravel Ohio roads or through the woods over dry twigs and sweetgum balls. I tried to keep up, limping like an old codger and next day lame. But I kept walking on sore feet because I wanted to keep up. I wanted to be near them.
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Jane Shlensky’s poems will not make you limp although they can be sharp and pointed. They will make you want to come along and keep up. Jane loves her characters, which she has drawn from generations of rural memories and red clay. She grew up in Yadkin County, NC, just across the muddy river from me, and she sees those farmers and grandmothers and wives more clearly than they ever saw themselves, perhaps. I don’t sense Jane imploring us to return to those old times and old ways. Instead, she shines her light on the truth of what brought her up and made her. What we carry in our pockets may change, but what we carry in our hearts does not. Read Barefoot on Gravel and find a moment of balance in a world that is so often not.
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Ain’t No Sunshine
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“Oh, Lord,” she says, mixing the batter
for pancakes, the sausages sizzling,
the coffee perking in her mama’s pot
that’s so worn it’s barely metal.
She keeps it for the comforting perk,
fragrant life bubbling up, making promises.
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But he’s in his wing chair, hunkered
over his guitar, his face blank as rain,
his strum, hum, strum him,
accompanying his slow moan.
His voice is like buttered rum, oiled
and warm as fever, just enough gravel
in his bass notes to scratch at her heart.
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“Oh, Lord, that man,” she says to no one,
but her Lord hears everything in her heart.
She knows this as sure as she knows
the spit of oil before she tips the batter in,
as sure as she knows the hiss and blister,
bubble browning in the cakes.
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He is having one of his blue days –
won’t fight the sadness, just leans on
that old guitar, curls in on himself
like a dog that hopes to lick the pain away.
He’s finding a sound to help him stand,
a trembling chord to lift a mighty weight.
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He’s singing his own song and she knows it,
her heart clutching at his words, wishing
she could mother is sorrow away, feed
his hopes. She needs him, even if
they struggle every day. She turns to Jesus
kneeling on the wall and whispers,
“Dear Lord, that man there . . . we best
but some blueberries in these cakes.”
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Jane Shlensky
from Barefoot on Gravel, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, KY; © 2016
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❦ ❦ ❦
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One Better
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While we puzzled over the perfect
birthday gift for our father,
he packed up his fishing gear and
a few clothes and bid us farewell.
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Jane Shlensky
from Barefoot on Gravel, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, KY; © 2016
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