Shadows under the Catalpa trees encircling the square play in lightly speckled shapes
caressing the dust of bits and pieces coarsely crushed under footfalls of foreigners; millers on a palace green
strewn with ashes. Whorled leaves shroud littered remains, remnants to raise memories too distant to distill, too
recent to dispel.
Speaking overmuch of it and spied still thinking on it moves her to gently chide me as if to change
feelings that are too closely moored to memory. Feigning to forget would only be to forsake what is fixed between us
and still lies in a future where they lay me down round you in that spot of space such a little wait away.
Chrysanthemums slowly fade and herald season end. Maryland days are growing chilly beckoning in Rituals
of gathering wood for firesides to tend; Musings portend cozy evenings side the kin.
Soon the snows drift so prettily
o’er land Sculpting contrasts in windy hues that shimmer so. Figures cut eights, snowmen rise, and fishermen on ice
tan As children warm hands round rusty barrels eyes aglow.
But, come the the cur, do our fears not stir At woods
so clear with stacked piles of twigs too thin? While swift the poor are moving south avoiding her, The rich are toasting
themselves fore the trade win.
I did not know then the hook, beaked birds, the vultures, were premonitory
messengers roosting atop the boarded up Fairmount schoolhouse; dazzling down a Bay, sunset lit evening, sensing
and smelling your disease at the first wake of your lime light .
You once said to me that things outlast people. Did
you sense then that these included love or were you dealing words, from out your mind and tossing them in that light
hearted manner that conveyed much more meaning?
Hopscotching from stone to stone, burrowing into dusty court
house records, I presumed too much; thinking you would forever be there waiting to pick at the remnants of my day, pretending
to listen with interest to a resurrected history of a family in which you were not then recorded.
It was one of
the best summers we ever collected, just you and I, an outing in one sunshine, shimmering summer, that sizzled
with the humid heat you reveled in. Innocent and sure that more summers like this would follow, I was oblivious and
unaware of the importance of those winged portents of time sitting there staring, red faced and blunt-footedly rude, their
heads down as if invited to a Thanksgiving feast, and arriving early, waited greedily to devour their turkey.
Rain seemed fast fleeting netting nothing ’cept a dizzyingly white and dazzling sunlight leaving
me happily harbored in crisp clean colors.
The Bay froze over just the one year, backing the house to an
icy black mirror of creek; a miracle to marvel and one I’ve nary seen since.
In spring, spreading out o’er
a quarter mile grew nurseries of azalea and rhododendron stopped short at eroded cliffs breaking on your reason.
Green and yellow tufted mustard fields growing wild either side the road waked the ride. The honk
at the turn often startled a partridge or a bobwhite.
Georgia Gal, the shepherd friend to your old age, guarding
the white washed house so comfortable, barked a greeting pretending not to be glad.
Each summer had goals to mark
those years; Masons' breakfasts, garden victories, and churchly things-
harvesting by
right the immigrant neighbor’s crab pots. You drifted there to stay some years before, to dry dock and wait your turn at
being a Bay ghost, a merchant mariner as dignified as The Cleo fading away 'side the road.
Everything about
you bespoke lower Bay. Coming home that fall to the Delmarva chronicled you; bow high, into the family log.
And anchored there, you found the blue green harmony resonant of that water ring round this land, so flat,
sandy, and scented of high tide.
Reckoning my life amidst these grassy shores, I too love this tribal land
and claim my marshy share, your grateful son and heir to the Chesepiooc.
Waning
bluebells wilt us another hot Virginia day as a red winged black bird, perched on a cat tail, suddenly takes fright
and flies for the closest clutch.
This field sways mustard backed by a blue sky next a blocking brown marsh.
Soldier on. We’ve ruddy deeds to do outfitted in our hothouses, uniforms of withering gray.
Sighted shots
shoot up white clouds, as naked lead chases down bits of blue staining red the rippling yellow.
Shrilly they
cry-- then die. They are easy marks for a kill, these blue prey, their yellow bellies oozing red.
See, all
are dead save two, white eyed coons in blue. Hands flap! Mouths yap!
Neck them low below that red bud tree. Take
this hemp rope of pale yellow that hangs down in a pale yellow, wound round, hung down, ‘side my brown and steely
mare.
There is nothing that has caused me more
frustration and, in some cases, outright confrontation, because some readers do not understand that the "voice of the poem"
is not always the "voice of the artist". The "voice is a vehicle" that can be maniupulated in many ways to do many artistic
things. Here is a clip of Whoopi Goldberg, an artist whom I identify with a great deal. I think her "Parrot Joke" best illustrates
what I'm trying to say...Ed :)
The salt waters are rarely more than three feet deep in a hundred mile
radius of what remains of the islands, making for the richest breeding grounds in all the world for their prized, soft
shell, blue crabs. The Bay seems so calm. Everyday washes a little more away though with an ever faster beating and
tow, an unkind progression, quicker than in the decades before. The erosion is inevitable and the shrinking so very visible
as my beloved islands of Smith and Tangier, dubbed, “ Islands out of Time”; islands of the lower Chesapeake Bay, islands
of my ancestors, islands of my roots, go sinking.
The communities are shrinking with the young anxious to
escape to the mainland. A few, the hardiest, do not want to go. It is in the blood, this feistiness: a tenaciousness
born of centuries of holding on. Those that take the mail boat travel light with heavy expectations. Some never return
but most do, at least for visits that start at first once a year for the annual camp meeting, and then become less
and less frequent as if to emphasize the receding sands. They bring back foreign sounding words and a twisted way of thinking.
Everything is said in a straight and unimaginative way. Speaking in opposites as is the custom is forgotten. There
is a fainter resonance in the Elizabethan “a”s and they talk so fast, almost in a chatter that takes the breath away.
The cats run under the boardwalks in search of silence and to escape the mainland smells.
Those that are island
bound don’t mix well anymore with these. The one have nothing but the optimism of the day, the other have everything
in a pessimism of the times. The one drink on the sly while the visiting relatives no longer know the value of a lie. The
older islanders politely pretend to listen, their thoughts lost in the crab shanties just feet away. Everyone though comes
together in the big camp meeting tent. These islands are Methodist and Joshua Thomas part of their history. The name
Wesley is still common. These camp meetings held in the single huge tent have always been the biggest event of the year.
Some things are primary, so sacred they are inviolable.
It is then that the bond is felt again and rekindled. There
is no blame, and even if some forget to speak in opposites, that odd tradition of saying precisely the backwards
version of what you mean to say, the truths no matter how spoken, straight or twisted round to need unraveling, they still
ring true. They are inherent in things primary that even separation will not eradicate; values set in the cement of faith,
optimism, and an acceptance that in the end the storm passes and the sun breaks through.
Everything passes away
except things primary; things not bound by any boundaries or no less solid with the caresses of the sea. They can’t
be covered over or washed away. They are buoys that mark the channels and point the way safely into any harbor, any
harbor you may find yourself sailing into, island bound or not.
Modeling a flagging medal below the Mason
Dixon Line, Big Daddy was given a warm Buckler hastily chilled by ice cubes snapping quickly. Big Daddy is triggered
at the sound of cracking. His needs require preparation and some consideration for denial.
Big Daddy expects
applause if not standing ovations, so heckling was a surprise almost as extra large as the expletives thrown
at his second coming.
With seeming aplomb and appropriate rhetoric prepared for just such an occasion, Big Daddy,
a practiced magician, commanded the ice cubes vanish amidst the yanking and yapping of division, and he got his
standing ovation from the applause of the ever faithful;
Time
not measured Little boy napp’d Atop pom poms of white chenille Ages ago Hot windy St. Mary’s afternoon Spot
lights of sun On tall green grass Whispered secrets outside windows Propped up
Never again so safely slept In
a harbor my sole kingdom Ruled by matriarchs black and white Moored to men Some tattooed Others sweetly smelling
of Rye Grandmother’s bosom cuddly and massive Drowned me in a smell of starched cotton ancestry
From a kitchen
of black and white enameled stoves Nigger ladies chattered Lowly ladies with high values Rock beds I didn’t
sass these sorceresses of cakes and pies They whipped ass Protectors of stacks of soft shell crabs And fried chicken
secrets their own Much respected They cooked ham stuffed with kale To bury us with
Grammy ran a nursing home Where
war weary seamen came to rest Well fed their names and medals known Certain they were good for one last test Escape
duty free Long’s you didn’t go too far up the road
Sunken smack in middle of the yard Sat a ghost captain free Pigs
in sties ‘hind rough hewn slats From their trough splattered Some of the chickens Peck'in here there everywhere And
neath the house in all sorts and sizes Lived the wild cats in their world apart
That white house on cinder blocks Once
a silly one room school Kept grow’in one closet at a time Till rooms were stuffed with that decade’s census A cozy
place not up to code Uncle Bud flew stars and bars o’er stars and stripes No one thought that uncivil He being judge
and play’in in the Klan
Whole damned place a garden I picked her pretty flowers Cause she said not to and expected
it She’d long hair never shorn brushed and braided with pride I often snitched her snapp’in turtles using Dick’s net From
muddy waters ditched side the house Their soupy purpose my own They always made it safely back With no harm done
On
Sundays Billy Jim my cousined hero and I Dutifully dressed for church Aunt Bettie whizzed by Studebakered the girls Honked
off Late we’d walked To end of path Turned left for the crick Fished or swam butt naked Boys worshipped outside In
the Free State sun Men in bars
No I never napp’d so well As in that kingdom long ago Nestled close to two
shores Between too many wars Down home in the Land of Pleasant Living
First, they moved the noble poplars and the tall pines, stripping
the hills in only a generation.
Tempered now in greed, next, they proffered to pitch their tracks to a greater
tender; these barons of the rails; robbers with newly purchased “n” rights. They sent hireling men, many a former
logger and lumberjack; the hill men, underground to scout out Salley’s find; for profits suspected to lie beneath
the bruised, and full-bellied Appalachians.
In the passages dark and dangerous, the shaft-sinkers found seams;
black riches beyond greediest expectations. With industry and speed the company owners, representatives of barons
back East. soon had the recently discovered seams yielding rich loads borne out on long tracks. Too few though were
tracking the robber barons.
The wheels turned; whirling in all directions. It was an era when immigrants proved
profitable; an agitation invested into this brew of native, negro, and the new benefited the “Man” and seasoned
the company store still more. The rich and slick soon had all in a kind of slavery that incited a wretched
worker, often a family man, to strike, temporarily shedding soot stained, hard hats their shiny lamps symbols
of that servitude.
Fields strewn with tents soon housed the dispossessed united to work for something fair,
anything freer feeling. They never stood a chance. Strike after strike failed and in the end they had to await “Big
Bill” trailing his friendly, “Teddy” bear, both finally checking and tracking the robber barons.
Victory came
in an act. Robbery that rude and reviled, successfully railed against was thought to be relegated by law, put
to past.
I went ‘down the
road’ alone wanting no living company. I checked out the gravesites at Trinity in St. Mary’s City and those ‘down
the road’ at St. Michaels; buried Dad’s old Ronson lighter in the Judge’s chamber and planted tulip bulbs a few feet
away in the recently turned soil of her grave.
I drove down to Point Lookout before going to the house. The
Point’s too changed to care much anymore but I did; I cared a great deal at the desecrations of what had been the
best memories of a childhood not very blessed. We’ve ne’er been folk to lay our resentments down easily. There are
fewer and fewer now who remember the white, clapboard, naval hotel, three stories high, with its long pier, jutting
out over the Potomac, and the small surrounding community of cottages; all bulldozed decades ago making way for
black, asphalt, parking lots and sandy, stucco, bathhouses. It was then they seized the Judge’s land in the name of a
state, we knew more about what parts were wise to waist or waist not. We still do. Those publican funded outhouses
erected in the name of progress were locked that day against the coming winter, their graffiti covered, fleck painted
walls, hissing defiantly back at the pushing winds. It was fittingly chilly even at high noon on that early November
day. Anger was a warm salve for cold, wounded memory.
I climbed up into the van, said my goodbye to the ghost
made redundant, and headed ‘up the road’ and over the causeway at a speed I remembered Cotton would have dared and
took that curve for a last time and held the road, with a rebel yell; eight cylinders and gas at three dollars a gallon!
Go to Hell! Ten minutes later I was to the monument for the confederate dead who died in the prison camp that had existed
and vanished just ‘down the road’ at the Point long before all that I had just conjured to recollect was built
up and then torn down in its turn. History has ne’re respected man-made changes to geography.
I’ve read those bronzed
names for so many decades now in search of some connection, just for the sake of community, but to no avail. They
are planted in a garden too far from home left to our responsibility. The family homestead this last century lies just
across the road, and it is to there I now hesitantly turned to tread with a unfamiliar fear for the future; to
the old, one room, Victorian school-house added on and onto, one room at a time, until it had become a nursing home floating
on cinder blocks settling into sandy soil; shaky pinions but firmly planted with the conviction of an intention to stay.
That stay had now come also, in its turn, to an inevitable end finished with the sign marked ‘sold’ at the end of the
drive.
Surprisingly the door was locked. We had ne’er locked doors. I broke a window pane and entered through that
kitchen that held such a cauldron of stirring recollections of family matters played out to an audience of colored
women cooking on black and white enamel stoves under Miss Sophie’s supervision, her manner intimidating everyone. Even
my formidable grandmother was temperate in her own kitchen. I won’t dwell on the food; paradise lost. I took a sad
last tour, through the bedroom where I remembered Mary Allen brushing my Granny’s hair, unbraided to the floor, and
on through to that bedroom where Dad crossed “over the river to rest under the shade of the trees”. All the rooms had
something to say but in the end it was all goodbyes.
The grounds, mercifully, were much changed. The sty was gone,
the ghost broken up for it’s cypress, the chicken houses long ago torn down. I ne’er did know what happened to Dad’s
beehives that he started and tended in the cancerous months leading up to his death. Her garden was there, though,
so recently tended and already so quickly grown over. That’s why I planted the tulips for her in anticipation of next
spring. My aunt always looked forward and ne’er back. I must try even now past that halfway buoy to master this.
It
was done. None of the children cared enough and in truth it was not practical. All of us through the years laid down
roots too far away to stay. It was agreed upon. It was done. All including me were ‘up the road’ and too far away.
It was done and gone so quickly. Who wrote, “haste makes waist”?
I drove the length of the drive and stopped at
its end before turning to go ‘up the road’. Stepping down out the van I scooped up a handful of soil and ‘Little
Butch’- ‘Ed, Junior’ put this in his dungaree pocket, the left backhand pocket reserved in any pants since childhood for
such treasures. I have no idea what I will do with this rich and loamy soil, but it is a physical memento of a family’s
ups and downs, it aspirations and disappointments, its happiest and saddest moments. It holds memories and secrets that
will forever go untold. Just canvas the ghosts of the many dead, naval veterans who still haunt these acres, or if
you dare ask Cotton’s spirit back ‘down the road’ at the causeway curve he finally failed to turn on two wheels, or
try to pry from me all I know. No, it is done. It is that side of history that is lost with every goodbye.
A scholarly sojourn down pedestrian aisles, bordered with slight variations in
form and style, and there it is, one more cold marble slab chiseled with data and dates, shadowed recesses, of
a hot Maryland sun.
Under this stood, a lovingly laid out playground of little plastic toys in blanched colors that
would not decay or rot.
Between the neatly combed rows of yellow daffodils stood the many memories, mementoes
beginning with a blue airplane, bordering a purple dinosaur, and in a second row a brown pony, and a pirate’s dagger
to pierce the heart.
A little imagination conjures him up to play again, his fair, sandy hair, now resting
below in the dark, unbleached by the Somerset sun.
Death presents the living with unwanted tests, whims of
the fickle fates; doling out check-offs until in the end all are passed.
