V E R S E and I M A G E

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.

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.

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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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.

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.

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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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.

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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