I’m no fan of bad poetry, but I do understand the lyrical impulse — that attempt to connect pure sensation with something available to the declarative self. So, here’s something I wrote a while back, while living in the Northeast but thinking of my two grown-up daughters and reflecting on memories of growing up, myself, in southeastern Tennessee. Btw, as I continue to learn about HTML and the ins and outs of WordPress, I apologize for wonky layouts.
Devil’s
Shoals
(for Delphi and Lydia)
Before
the Hiwassee widens like a settled ribbon
of
sunlight across the hills, husk yellow and green,
where the old train bridge passes overhead —
before
the widening slow of the river
at the
gravel lot filled with the church buses
that carry the tubes for the weekend faith groups,
lies the last rapids, the Devil’s shoals.
And
when I was a kid canoes would eddy out there,
and pull
up to the beaten path that stepped up
boulders and blackberry brambles.
Where
the path leveled we’d follow
the
tracks laid straight, blasted out of shale,
and then
down the embankment to slip into the water
that sucked as smooth and as cold as any promise ever could.
Wading
out into the current, we held hands like sentries,
through
the rushed lashings, our breath catching
when the water hit the belly, until
we
dropped, one-by-one, buoyed
by our
life jackets past the shore’s retreat
as we
floated down into the mouth of the shoals
desperate of breath and arms flailing.
Water
slapped the face and pulled – pulled us below
to where
darker flows reversed and crossed
under the
heavy waves and sunlight.
Our
sneakered feet kicked out and fought,
our lungs
ached in their insistence, until hands
joined
the pull of preservers to heave us heavenward
where
eye-blinking vision washed up like fish.
Once
upon a time a boy lost his strength in the shoals,
and
crying out to his father for help,
was carried past the hitched boats.
Another
time a boy who had lost his father
and seen
his mother remarry a Methodist minister
took to the tracks, and walked the mile to the parking lot,
each stubborn
tie after each stubborn tie hammered firm.
Either
way, the devil sought us all —
like a misguided gift to the homesick-buried
in a
place where breath and Will battled for supremacy.
And
ever when the day closed, tired and content,
the youth
directors gathered up their charges
and
bussed them back to their beds
still hearing the rush of the shoals in the dusk of mid-summer.