My great-great uncle, Zach.
Great-great-grandpa
left Mexico at a time
when nobody did.
He worked for a soldier,
a farmer, a preacher,
made wooden shoes and bowls,
the way he had south
of the Rio in his youth
He married Black Irish Nancy
then changed both their names
to Franklin. He signed with an x
and told the clerk he was White.
She filed his marriage under
“colored” where I found his middle initial
was his mother’s Mexican name.
They say if you go ’round
midnight, you can hear
soldiers crawling up the bluff.
Leaves crunch beneath their boots,
Confederate wagons roll
across the blank bridge
and wounded men holler
as cannons blast and iron
balls whistle through air.
Maybe you’ll think you see,
but when you look again
it’s not there. All I know
is, I’m leaning over this rail,
watching the full moon
stare back at me
in rippling water.
I feel summer night wind
and the only sounds
I hear are the long ago
shatter of widows’ hearts
and these words marching,
with soldier feet, marching
inside my head.
Peep o’ daylight
we lit out
to the West Virginia border,
to Deedie Moe’s trailer
at the foot of a Kimper mine;
we stayed the night,
slept on the floor,
cause he ain’t got beds
to speak of.
We woke with coal dust
caked in our noses
and fog in our eyes,
then climbed into trucks
and rode on over to Pikeville
to put on a show for tourists,
what come to the mountains
to see
an endangered species.
My daddy wears sawdust
on his gray cap
and powders himself
with timber dandruff.
At night he walks,
across the soggy bottom;
pulls his shoes off,
sits barefoot on the porch
where he smokes,
drinks instant coffee, black,
and watches us catch lightning bugs
in fruit jars.
Behind him she rises,
that old haint, Sparks Ridge.
She looks over the valley to claim
the magic of his life,
a working man’s family,
to gobble us up
and take us down,
like oak tree roots,
take us down,
down, down,
down to her belly.
*first published in Other Voices International Vol.20
Used to be a mountain
back yonder, behind the house
rose up like mornin sun
jest as purdy as ye please.
T’aint there no more,
some men with money
came up here and blew it
to smittereens. All’s left
is that nasty hole o’ black
water, iffen ye kin call it thet.
More like the slush
in the bottom o’ pap’s
outhouse.
To learn more about the cost of mountain top removal visit any of these links:
http://www.christiansforthemountains.org/index.html
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2007/09/mountaintop_ministry.html#more
http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/02/16/reece/
http://www.bookrenter.com/products/details/9780976881711/Coal_A_Poetry_Anthology/?utm_source=googlebase&utm_medium=cpc [I have work in this book]
http://www.blairmtp.com/CoalAnthology.htm
“I’m honored to be here with you. We’re an endangered species, we hillbillies. Massey Energy is terrorizing us in Appalachia. Little old ladies in their 70s can’t even sit on their porches. They have to cut their grass wearing respirators. That’s how these people have to live. The coal companies are the real terrorists in America. And we’re going to expose them for the murdering, lying thieves that they are.”
—Julia Bonds
Plastic and politics are the devil.
Plastic multiplies like flies
or roaches,
filling up cupboards
and cracks between
refrigerators and walls,
just waiting for its lord,
lord of the flies.
Politics are laden with lies
and lie with liars
then get up feeding lies
to gullible masses
who stand like
baby birds, mouths open,
waiting for their father,
father of lies.
__________________
*for those who understand and those who don’t wouldn’t even if I explained it.
When I am alone in their woods,
(which may be any woods at all)
I walk softly
with iron backbone
and steel eyes.
Jaguars walk these hills
dressed in cougar skin,
calling their catamount
calls among bear caves
and beaver dams;
they say I am kin
though breath catches
in my throat at sight
of their tracks and
hair stands
frozen.
Donde estan las estrellas?
Donde estan las flores?
Donde estan las conaciones
de las ninas?
Estan en el Valle de las Sombras,
las sombras de muerte
donde vive ayer bailar,
bailar con eternidad, donde la viente sopla,
sopla donde quiere.
“It’s not right for me,”
said the big New York agent
about my story.
He wanted an exclusive.
I waited two months while
he looked,
two months after two
years of waiting
on the one with enthusiasm.
“I can sell it!”
she said.
She didn’t.
So I write again,
not query letters,
just poetry, just stories
and I give them
to hearts that need
to hear, like Holy Spirit
gifts and God-love,
not for sale.
Too priceless for tags,
but if someone offers,
maybe…I’ll consider.
Passion flowers smell chocolate
in white dust
along tobacco patch edges
while Caribbean skies
lie over Appalachia,
like a lover,
speaking sweetness
to her in valley cane
and swamp marshes
where dragonflies
glint blue above
brackish dog day water.
This world belongs
to mountain children
where the South rises
with every oak, every pine,
every hundred year old pear,
rises from death
rich earth
to testify.
Should I feel guilty for porch
afternoons beneath mimosa fragrance
and magnolia blooms
for hummingbird whizzing
and wind chime songs?
Should I have shame for my beneath-
the-bush lazy cat and red geranium
pot swan, for shady side streets
swept by westerly breezes?
When Iran and Iraq are bombing,
when a hundred other places fight
and California is hot? When England
is flooded and bees die?
Should I dig a hole, hide
and wait for trumpets,
or just teach a child to read,
then give thanks for my corner
while it still exists?
She rises,
swirling white phantom
over blue-green water,
then dissolves
into mid-morning sun
with no promise
of return.
