Ninety-nine years ago an instant of time was snapped.
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A picture of a life just beginning preserved by caring; April 1926, rural Alabama. Her birth certificate denotes, in cursive, under Doctor-Midwife:Mrs. B. A midwife or, who knows now, just by chance a caring neighbor? Is that the birthing sheet hung to dry in the background?
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See the slate-looking stones placed under the rockers and the two pillows in dinge softness framing a newborn life; daughter, sister, mother; an endless array of assignations. See the leather covered seat... the rocker's an inside chair. No flash bulbed cameras back then for poor farmer folks; she had to be brought outside to face the sun...the glare of life's beginnings. See her tiny fingers grasping, searching for something to clutch, to squeeze...always...to cling to?
“She’s a Traveler, for sure.” Nurse sighed through a tired, unpretentious smile. “Gotta chase her down at times to give’er meds.
Other day tried to get in the mechanical room! Course, it was locked... but you never can tell... lord knows why she’s always wheeling around...
looking for somebody, probably you, or a way outta here. Course, we all love’er; she's always sweet’n kind... always saying Thanks Honey!, Hi! and such...
except at night sometimes when she screams and calls for something we don’t understand... yeah, she’s really a Traveler, a Searcher for sure."
For weeks they came daily; grackles and vultures swarming in plagues and kettles descending to take, devour claimed food. A scold of jays bitching from leafless trees did nothing to deflect or deter the feedings.
Now they are gone; the migrant portions of their species; the uneasy, the unsettled, the searchers. For days by my windows I stood entranced, aching to leave, to gorge; imploring them to take me along to soar.
I remember a horrid infant:
the creation of rabid men,
a concoction of desires,
ideas and secret process
devoid of conscience.
They thought the riddle was solved:
The forfeiture of a fraction
for the good of the whole.
But the whole was demeaned;
the part was not consumable
and refused to lie in silence
as mere charred bone.
Soybean rows paved the fields in tan shades heralding by their dryness a nearing harvest; a crop, a cycle, a promise of a fulfillment. Lean, overalled, old man paces his fields; squatting, testing multiple plants’ readiness. A taciturn self can’t hide the bliss of Harvest.
A seventeen-year-old boy has harvested, with, according to companions, “extreme happiness,” a young, rare albino antelope. Ask about the hunt, the harvester said, “I‘m was so happy! I couldn’t git a breath!” Culls blood runs thick-red over white hair.
“News! Breaking news! News just for you! An illicit harvesting may have just occurred! Apparently, the Harvester did not issue any notifications prior to this culling and states his intent was ‘totally eradicate, not mere persecution, of those sordid, ethic beast!’”.
An apiarist, a priest and a carpenter walked into a bar. OK. What happened then? A cellist walked in, opened his case and shot them with his AR-15. OK. Why just those three? He was stung by a bee, touched by a priest and his father was a carpenter. OK. Was that his trial defense? Oh, never caught and the three weren’t regulars, anyway. OK. Did you just make all that up? What’s your job? Gotta go, due at the Symphony Hall.
with the flow’s blasting bellow of life heard only
mutely by us, whispering under our constant din
of rants, proclamations and squeals of whiny ills.
As the river scrounges, ravishing, stealing
fish cavern walls from beneath its own banks
that hinder the flow it knows no purpose only
the god of movement’s flood. Stopping is death.
The mother oak by strength and massive reach
commands her hill only by chance and entrée
by tenacious grasp of Gaia’s breast sucking
the flow of mother’s milk. Her mammoth face
in breeze sings praise. The flow, not by beat,
but by constancy plays the melody of her song.
This is a slightly revised version of a poem originally posted in October 2012. I am slowly adding photos to each old post and, in a sense, reliving past memories and experiences; some sweet, some not so much.
Memories do blanch, change, slip to nonexistence but one still remains clear as a straight razor edge. 1953 probably. 1st grade, small wood, rural rental with an old outhouse...but we had running water!
At my new school we had "duck and cover" drills and every Sunday service the preacher screamed at me words directly from God; if deemed an unbeliever, I would endure forever a lake of fire and brimstone.
My dreams of fire came at night way before I slept. I knew my small bed and handmake quilts offered no protection, only a sweaty taste of fire to come as I clutched them in fear tightly around my neck.
One way or the other, I was destined to be burned, by The Bomb or by my inability to accept gods will; to be a red seething char as those in our coal stove, only screaming with all the others in our agony.
I am no longer six. I am 76. Accepting the inevitable is a process accomplished by most; a natural process, not taught in schools. I went to a funeral home today and purchased a prepaid cremation plan. Hello, Fire!
Belated Words 