The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Katherine E. Young
(for Alexander)
[T]ho' a Child be ever So dutiful it never repays back the cares troubles and Anxieties which Parents undergo in the raising them to the State of Manhood. ―Michael Cadet Young to his son, Thomas, ca. 1769 i. Weed of the countryside sprung up in swamps, on septic tanks adaptable as dandelion of that ilk: commonplace. One rare summer day silken strands slithered across suburban lawns into well-kept gardens where weeds were called “wildflowers” where neat, patterned stones maintained borders real and imagined — hair of milkweed sifting through thumbs stroking, combing, caressing a cheek — crinkled skin like chitin tough reluctant in its new landscape. ii. What did I give you, child of my body? Silk of my spirit, steel of my hide? Are you roving weed like me or will you plant yourself, defenseless in poison foxglove, shark-toothed roses? iii. Child in the kitchen imitates the whirring of the coffee grinder; Papa pours a cup of milk. Every moment now we’re watching every moment now awaiting the crackling, peeling, bursting rain of seeds on streamers sallying forth mutatis mutandis please god mutable world.
(James Byrd, Jr., in memoriam)
squares, their muzzle-loaders close at hand their ears forever cocked, as if whole Union hosts encircled them still. Along the hill at Tinkling Springs, raw boards once carved with name and cross have rotted now. Granddaddy, eighty-three, his eyesight poor cannot, in fact, recall the site; he clears dead leaves, uproots the vines that hide other lost graves, shifts to keep the weight off his bad knee. “I swear it was right here” he says to us uncertainly. Now asphalt carpets the town, carpets dusty trails our farmer boys marched off along in search of glory. As if marching off was really all there was to it. We have no Colonel Shaw, no Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts to call our own. Our boys helped dig the ditch, threw Shaw’s body in among the “niggers” he had led. Some of our boys might still shoot off their guns train dogs to attack, they might just chain a black man to a pickup truck’s bumper, drunk and rebel-yelling all the while. But others answered the call: “Civil rights! Education!” Some stood by lunch counters marched beside the righteous. Taught their young to judge in new and better ways. Granddaddy, scanning tree and stone for signs of his own Confederate grandfather’s grave has also heard those words. He says that folks his kind of folks, just didn’t think. He tells of hiring neighbors, skilled black men to butcher hogs. Tired, hungry men, who refused good food rather than eat a meal served on a table set apart. “I always treated a man like a man” he says now, “But I could’ve done better.” He limps off towards the car, clambers in says no more the whole way home. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |