Winner : Terrain.org 7th Annual Poetry Contest
Selected by Eamon Grennan
Boyhood Trapped Between Water and Blood
1.
A boy, I knew nothing of the copperhead’s fangs,
swam with them most summers, sank with their faint mint smell
and blue-lit ripple flames of their bodies in creek water—
Kestrels of light
lunged through the water surface and flattened into one great trellis
of sun, every contour of the creek bed
branded in a fire that wove
its shape into shapelessness.
Salamanders and crawdads never bothered me,
nor the ticks that teemed on every branch—
I was alone
in that chapel of water and wind.
I lived in a yellow house smothered in leaf-shadow
and would dream at night of the creek, clear
as the smell of wood smoke
on a winter dusk blown with stars,
even as June rains
engraved the water
with meaning, forever blurred by the sudsy iron that
turned water to blood.
My eyes itched with a grief
that was mine and not mine
every night, every night.
North into woods, just out of view,
leaned a rotten three-walled shack
with no roof and the words “die nigger” inscribed
in blood on the west wall—the letters
flanked in blood-red swastikas,
a shade of crimson
like the dace that darted in the creek’s oxbows;
and there were still signs
of a struggle: scraps of a green T-shirt,
a broken window toothed in the same blood,
the shattered pane like an eye
blinded, never storm-cleansed,
never burned away.
2.
A boy, I carried sun-drunken notions
of time as song, the crispness
of fall and its subtle rumor—
I did not know why the wind
stirred some father-witted guilt
in me, and as I jumped
from one side of the ditch
to the other again and again,
I could not evade visions
of a man taken by a hoard of others
and dragged through
briars and the indifference
of deerberry and resurrection fern—
I knew even then, a boy,
that the man was being forced through
the final door for nothing
more than pigmentation,
and that the only sound he made
were the gasps of air the men
kicked out of him
as he lay fading in silence,
his last possession.
And there in the bramble still lay his clothes.
And there on the jagged stone lay the vision of his head.
A boy, I craved design,
a structure through which I came to
understand or escape
words that followed me
like the sound of footfalls
in the leaves just behind actual passage.
Some nights in spring the song thrush
bore out its brash and beautiful music,
as if the world had torn
and revealed an answer,
as if something more had pursued
me and kindled my insomnia
with a plea.
3.
Once a black boy named Seneca
ran with me down the road
and his family waved at us
and shouted encouragements.
We leaned headlong into our running
until breathless,
reckless through the moths
and the distant orchard light
and the moon-curve against
the back of my grandparents’
home where a lamp flicked
on and glowed as we passed.
That same night my grandmother
yanked me in and belted me
until I bled,
screaming the scriptures
until I could weep them back—
my crime the mere nearness
to a “nigger boy,” the “tacky” fact
that we were both fierce with joy.
4.
Eastward, heaps of goat bones dotted
a baseball field overgrown in sicklepod,
and every dusk for months
Seneca and I met to sift
through those mythic shapes, to stare
into the eye sockets of many skulls
as if they might rouse in us some memory
of another time, another creature,
to elude the heat and stifle
of that place, scalded with resentments
extravagant as the trees’ canopy,
the woods between my house
and the other world always nightfall,
unbroken shadow.
Poetry judge Eamon Grennan says…
I have to say that of all the good poems and selections submitted, my favorite was “Boyhood Trapped Between Water and Blood.” This brave poem begins with brief, plangent echoes of Dylan Thomas’s “Poem in October”–to set the springs of memory running in a landscape and a weather richly, powerfully, beautifully evoked:
Kestrels of light
lunged through the water surface and flattened into one great trellis
of sun, every contour of the creek bed
branded in a fire that wove
its shape into shapelessness.
Salamanders and crawdads never bothered me,
nor the ticks that teemed on every branch—
I was alone
in that chapel of water and wind.
I lived in a yellow house smothered in leaf-shadow
and would dream at night of the creek, clear
as the smell of wood smoke
on a winter dusk blown with stars,
even as June rains
engraved the water
Quickly, however, both the angle and the poem’s temper shift and we are steeped in a deeply troubling memory–presented in a controlled language that never stumbles into melodrama. The poem presents us, then, with the horror such a childhood event–traumatic in its violence, its racial implications–lives in appalled memory. The poem lifts us, so, out its lyrically Dylanesque evocations of the natural world into the politically charged territory of bigotry and violence, starkly presented, bravely faced up to.
And there in the bramble still lay his clothes.
And there on the jagged stone lay the vision of his head.
A boy, I craved design,
a structure through which I came to
understand or escape
words that followed me
like the sound of footfalls
in the leaves just behind actual passage.
From here, through other laden sections, the poem continues–without flinching or losing hold of its difficult threads, to end–in an evocation that has (I suspect) something of Wordsworth’s “Prelude” enlargements–in its dignified yet compact conclusion, as it comes to rest in:
a baseball field overgrown in sicklepod,
and every dusk for months
Seneca and I met to sift
through those mythic shapes, to stare
into the eye sockets of many skulls
as if they might rouse in us some memory
of another time, another creature,
to elude the heat and stifle
of that place, scalded with resentments
extavagant as the trees’ canopy,
the woods between my house
and the other world always nightfall,
unbroken shadow.
Grand! In the best sense grand. It was a pleasure to read and admire it.
William Wright is author or editor of over 20 books. His central loves are poetry, the teaching of poetry, and literary writing in general. He teaches master classes in writing around the country and works with creative writing students at several universities. He lives in Marietta, Georgia, with his wife, the writer Michelle Wright. His most recent book of poems is Tree Heresies (Mercer University Press, 2015).Ready more poetry from William Wright appearing in Terrain.org: three poems and three more poems.
Photo of copperhead by skeeze, courtesy Pixabay.
