Tag: Daughters

Devil’s Shoals

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.