FELIX CULPA
Too wet to plow, we climbed
the ridge where Jack-in-the-pulpit
and Fire pinks fringed woods' edge.
Spent of love, he lay crucified
across my Garden Path quilt, hat low
on his brow to shade the sun.
Stretched beside him, I thought his feet
the prettiest I ever saw on a man. Upright,
they framed the wet bottomland below.
Blue veins traced a mystery map
to his toes. I wiped them with the long towel
of my hair, woke him to adoration.
A cast of hawks rose on a draft
towing spring in their talons,
snaring us in a greening spiral.
I think of those elegant feet,
boot-shod, mud-logged, entrenched
below shell-plowed, fallow fields.
Summer fades, no word comes, I soon
harvest what he sowed before following war.
Tiny feet beat sad tattoos under my heart.
Preacher calls me Magdalene. I refute
him, knowing her wiser in her choosing,
blessed by loving, not damned.
-Jane Hicks
Jane read this poem to me at Hindman. I asked her to read it several times throughout the week. Even now, I find something new in it every time I read it. The poem is in her book, BLOOD AND BONE REMEMBER
-
AT REID HARTLEY'S JUNKYARD
To enter we find the gap
between barbed wire and briars,
pass the German Shepherd chained
to an axle, cross the ditch
of oil black as a tar pit,
my aunt compelled to come here
on a Sunday after church,
asking me when her husband
refused to search this island
reefed with past catastrophes.
We make our way to the heart
of the junkyard, cling of rust
and beggarlice on our clothes,
bumpers hot as a skillet
as we squeeze between car husks
to find in this forever
stilled traffic one Ford pickup,
tires stripped, radio yanked out,
driver's door open. My aunt
gets in, stares through glass her son
looked through the last time he knew
the world, as though believing
like others who come here she
might see something to carry
from this wreckage, as I will
when I look past my aunt's ruined
Sunday dress, torn stockings, find
her right foot pressed to the brake.
-Ron Rash
This poem is taken from Ron's book, RAISING THE DEAD. I first read it late one night at Hindman. I haven't recovered.
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