(Teresa McLamb Blackmon)
MEMO TO TEACHERS: THE POEMS FEATURED IN THIS POST WOULD MAKE WONDERFUL ASSIGNMENTS. I'D BE WILLING TO BET YOU'D GET SOME GOOD STUDENT WRITING IN RESPONSE TO THEM. SEND YOUR STUDENTS TO THIS BLOG AND ENCOURAGE THEM TO LEAVE SOME COMMENTS FOR ME. YOU CAN LEAVE SOME, TOO!
Another member of the Smithfield workshop was Teresa McLamb Blackmon. I had met Teresa a three years ago while conducting a seminar at the NC Center for the Advancement of Teaching. When I took a look at her poetry, I knew she was the real thing. She was able to bring small town and Eastern North Carolina rural life into full sensory life in a way that reminded me a lot of Shelby Stephenson.(www.shelbystephenson.com) And why not? She grew up where Shelby now lives--in the small town of Benson, North Carolina, where her father was a farmer and rodeo stock contractor and her mother a 3rd grade teacher. Teresa is a Media/Technology Coordinator in Johnston County. Earlier in her career, she taught high school English and Yearbook Journalism. She graduated from NCSU in 1984 with a MA in English and is an avid Wolfpack fan. Teresa lives on a farm near Benson with her husband and their four-legged babies, including dogs, miniature donkeys, horses, Brahma bulls, goats, and sheep. Her writing is an attempt to capture those people and places around Johnston County who shaped her life and her drive to create poetry. She has had poems published in Absinthe and in various local newspapers and community publications.
DELIVERY
I could never forget the climb
as tedious as Jack and the Beanstalk’s journey,
into the pickup truck where Daddy waited,
brimmed hat bent down, blue eyes
watching, reaching without arms
for me and the morning’s route.
We slipped through town, partners
with the yellow thief, to rob the
dew and set the day afoot.
“One quart for the Lamberts,” he’d say,
“and two for Old Man Webb.”
They slept, unaware that a child
had come to bring the milk,
warm in its glass cocoon, and a
father watched, knowing that
the empty bottles left, like sentinels in the night,
would come back to him;
tiny hands would bring them.
❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄
THE LEAP
It was not the jump that scared me,
kept me stone-still, frozen in sun.
I knew the air was safe though quick
With slick hands supple.
I could bear the bounce, could look
up and know I would find water.
It was the landing, not sure that the
plunge would take me to the bottom
and up again with breath to spare.
It was the falling into something bigger than me,
something that would surround me
like loose clothing I could not stretch to fit.
Would mid-air strand me like a
dead letter sent with good intentions,
lose me in clouds and storm me away?
Would I scatter in heat and cheat
the wetness, not diving at all but
lingering like a petticoat of steam
over children submerged in cool water?
That fear schooled me, swam me like
circling bubbles in the bathtub drain, me
so afraid of leaving the board, I’d bob
up an down like impatient bait,
watching myself in the blue mirror,
seeing a stranger I knew so well.
❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄
ONE WEEK BEFORE
Grandma lies dying, sucking breath like sun in snow,
leaving paths behind.
Her eyes doze in sockets closed from light: an eclipse.
We watch her twitch in bed and hear her groans;
they rattle and wheeze while we stand above her
like prison guards. Her chains smolder and spit fire.
They dazzle us with a strange pageantry—she is breaking loose.
❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄
MULES
I do not know mules like Grandpa did,
the gee-whinney,
the swish tune of fanning tail,
the shake of ears at flies
and green leaf flowers tickling.
Grandpa closed his eyes
back to that land
down beyond the fishing pond,
the sand slipping under tow-bagged sleds
he made with cola caps,
the mule, head down,
plodding back rows level.
Back to that fertile soil,
sweat and sweeping gardens
on backyard plots,
an old straw hat set to tilt the sun,
and mule muscles pulling and stretching
a day’s work,
when hours played in shadow, passing in the quiet.
“Were they really stubborn?”
“’Bout like children. You had to know how to handle them.”
❄❄❄❄❄❄❄
SEASONS
This might be the year of leaving,
this time when nothing
has the leisure of waiting.
Tree branches bare, a little fox scurries
for fish perished on the dam.
The moon, perched on sky smooth as tabletops,
sits like an empty cup to be filled.
Dusk brings the smell of earth,
as farmers return to fallow fields,
pull up the fruits of vine,
swiftly yanking roots and stems
as if the planting had been a mistake.
I live in this picture, a shadow near the bottom,
hovering like the catfish in winter mud,
just because the moment tempts beyond reason.
I write my life in small letters near the time that frames it all.
❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄
READY TO TELL
I try to tell the story word for word, play by play,
sit here straight-back chair and keyboard,
fingers waiting for moves
like two at a checkerboard.
All the characters are backstage:
Dixie and Bob, Mama, AnnieMae, Aunt Grace;
they are ready and nervous not a bit
about their debut, knowing this production
was inevitable.
Many wait in the wings, for their calling.
I’ve cast this scene a thousand times.
The stage is set, all props within reach,
like something a magician might pull
from a tall black hat.
The woman in the back row sits uncomfortably;
she is afraid it will be her story too,
as if there ever is but one
story of a life.
There is no curtain for there never was a need
for hiding,
as if long lengths of cloth could separate the view,
the seen from the unseen.
The lights are down and I am ready,
to step out, take my place at the center.
Let me tell you about growing up in a small town,
about barning tobacco and going to Sunday school.
We could walk the whole of Main Street
and never meet a stranger.
Tobacco worms wiggled through our fingers.
We could go to Miss Johnny Green’s little store
in “colored town,”
buy candy cigarettes and later real ones,
and know she’d never tell.
We made sand castles at Carolina Beach and
cried when the week was over at Camp Don Lee.
We played spin the bottle and took our kisses
in “Miss” Louise Godwin’s living room closet.
We ate cherry pies we honestly believed
“Miss” Lily made from scratch.
We lost Mary Lynn to a train and Danny to pond water.
We played Rook and cruised Charlie’s Carousel
in a Caprice Estate Station Wagon.
We believed that Wilhelmenia Utley was a witch and
that Debbie Dale Peacock had all the answers to our questions
about sex.
I will tell you all about these lives we’ve lived
right in front of your very eyes,
if you will listen:
you will know us every one.
No comments:
Post a Comment