| Poems by Charles Phillips
|
Riding to Zuni
Riding to Zuni in my grandfather's Dodge
through Suffolk and Smithfield,
Leaving the rivers and salt marshes
For that flat peanut land, ploughed and planted
From the road to the black clouds of pine.
Sitting deep in the broad, pleated seat, legs too short
to touch the floor,
I watched the telephone poles as straight and regular
as sentries
Between the sweeps of wire.
Along the Norfolk and Western, 1933
The peanut fields at Windsor are flat and bare to the distant pines,
and brown in January.
Beside the rails from West Virginia, a girl is dragging a sack
of gathered coal.
She hears a rumble and sees a white plume grow above the pines
As the black line comes in a curve from behind the trees and draws
taut across the open land.
The fireman sees the girl and climbs the tender,
waving as he kicks black chunks
Which explode and hide in the grass like prizes.
He waves again beneath the gallant plume as the engine shoulders on,
dragging the cars past in a clatter.
My First Taste of Horehound
Mrs Robinson was not there except for
her footsteps overhead
And the clicking of her typewriter.
My friend's grandmother was a white-haired lady
who wore printed dresses
And gave us hard, colored candies
wrapped in cellophane.
On restless summer days, we would climb the stairs
and knock at her white door
Which opened to a room bright with potted flowers
and cards pinned to the walls.
She would chat, open her tin box of sweets,
then send us out quite satisfied.
Downstairs again we could hear her typing her cards and notes;
And so she spent her days, content to reach
the world with letters.
My friend told me that she would greet the flowers
and talk to them.
And once, she told him, a flower nodded to her when she spoke.
Providence Road
Providence Road was still country when I was a boy.
Even Barrot's store with its two gas pumps
And front roof shading the benches was country then.
There were always men who sat and smoked and made bets about whose Coke
bottle had come the
longest way.
Sometimes they argued over whether Rocky Mount
or Asheville won.
It was important because the loser had to pay.
Barrot's store sat where Indian River Road
crossed Providence.
Once paved with oyster shells, which cut both tires and feet,
Now it was rock and tar, but it was country still
With barbed wire pastures just beyond the lane
from Shumadine's dairy farm
Where men came on tractors shedding mud
And stopped on the lot paved with bottle caps.
In college years my summer jobs worked me late
And coming home at night I rode my motor bike past Barrot's store
Where a car might be gassing up and the men were sure to be
sitting on the benches.
I always felt I had reached the country then;
And when I turned down Providence,
leaving the lights behind,
I rode into a well of pines, honeysuckle,
and cool night air.
The New Farm
It was called the Polesgrove farm
And lay up the hollow on Pense's Branch.
Once there had been an orchard, a field for corn,
And a house well-kept with flowers in the yard.
When the old man died, his sisters moved to Cincinnati
Leaving the house and furniture and all.
The thieves came and stole everything of use
And then the vandals broke the windows
Making trash of what was left.
The house became a barn, sheltering cows
from rain and heat,
Until it was burned without a reason.
It was April when I bought the farm
And led a friend up the hollow
to the ruined house.
The orchard and field for corn grew horse weeds now,
And where the house had stood, the foundation stones
Were overgrown with multaflora roses.
On a tree the hinges from a fallen gate and
Nearby two hyacinths, white and blue, said that
here was once a yard.
My friend bent to his knee and breathed the sweetness
of the flowers,
But my delight was greater still
To see that this abandoned farm
Had been made new by solitude and wild condition.
The hyacinths were a token of its past
And a sweet hint of what might be from this old yet virgin place.
Archaeology in Spring
I am a student of archeology although I do not know
a Gaulo-Roman shard from a Greek one.
I could not decipher cuneiform, and a hieroglyph to me
is just a strange, distorted drawing.
But as I walk these Kentucky hills I can tell about a past,
not by pots or burial mounds,
But by the flowers that I find in unexpected places.
Spring is the season best for study
before the leaves have spread
And the spiders have begun to span the paths with webs,
so you must wave a stick before you as you go.
Then, following an old carriage road around the ridges,
You may see jonquils in two rows and know they once marked
the walk to some front door.
Or you may find iris pushing their purple heads
above the greening fescue along the pasture's edge.
Hyacinths are more rare, but purple phlox will often crawl
over a low stone wall
Long after the gate has gone.
And later, when the year has warmed,
A patch of mint will often show a well or seeping spring.
When there is no set stone or planted pattern
to show a yard,
Evidence of habitation can be less.
Sometimes among the thickest stands of trees,
Long past fire wood size and now fair logs,
You may see a daffodil nodding in the sun
And know that here was once a lawn where children played.
The Chickens
On this damp October day, the sky is gray
Like the bottom of an old pot.
Beneath the hickory tree, the red hens peck and speak
While a single yellow leaf lilts to the ground.
Chicken-tense, they stop and stare at me
with prehistoric eyes.
The White Rock Rooster is regal in his place.
His comb is banner red and flutters with each
sudden shift of his head.
He turns--lifting first one clawed foot and then the other,
And in his queerly-comic way, I see his history and shudder.
The Threat
A shadow passes on the grass
As a black buzzard sweeps low along the ridge
Watching for death or helplessness.
And I, alone, splitting firewood
with single blows
Tighten my hold, knowing that my mischance
Would intersect his flight's intent.
The Tobacco Barn
The river ridge was the highest on the farm
And that's where they built the tobacco barn
to catch the wind.
Coming to it from the hollow side, you could find
buzzards roosting there.
They always flew before you got too near,
Spreading their black wings with grace
on the currents of rising air.
The farmer had forgotten when the barn was built;
He was old, and it was there before his father's day.
The roof was tin and rusted to a fine red-brown,
And though the locust posts were solid still,
The siding had rotted near the ground
And was patched with boards and sheets of tin.
But they hung tobacco in it every year
Because the air rising from the bottom lands
Cured the crop and did not let it rot or burn.
After each new wagon load was hanging from the rails,
The men sat to talk and smoke. They talked about the past
And what a long drive to Frankfort it had been
with a loaded wagon.
They wondered too why the spring had dried
on Bald Knob Hill
Where the mules had watered then.
Sam asked John about the barn where his grandad
had set the still,
And to tell how the revenuers had spied on him
from Lemay's cabin on the hill.
When they had laughed at the stories they all knew,
They were quiet and listened to the day;
The only sounds so near hot noon were the calls of men
cutting hay in Smithers' Bottom,
Or the river boat below the bend, shoving its loads slowly
past Hawkin's Bar.
The Dissolution
She had been dead for many years.
Her house was finally sold at auction.
It was nothing but a board shack covered with rolls of siding
patterned to look like stones,
An imitation of something substantial.
The farmer from across the road bought the house and acre of land.
He bought the house to tear it down, saying, "I will plant
a garden here."
I was hired to help.
When we pulled the siding off, the walls were filled with
mud dobbers dirt, snake skins, and nests for mice.
The siding-boards, some wide as doors, crumbled in our hands.
The house was filled with rubbish and things treasured up
that I could not understand.
She had bundles of papers carefully tied, balls of shredded rags,
handfuls of empty seed packs, and
boxes of things broken,
useless, and without a name.
"Was the old lady crazy ?" I asked.
"No. She was just poor," he said. "She never had anything and was
afraid to let anything go."
We carried out the rubbish and began to take the floor apart,
Calling to each other now and then,"Have you found that bag
of hidden gold?"
When the roof and walls lay flat and the few good boards were
stacked to the side, we set the mass afire.
There were daffodils along the walk;
I dug them up and planted them in my yard.
And on my wall are two photographs I found in an album on her floor.
One is a picture of three little girls, barefooted, sitting
on a bench.
The girl in the middle is holding a cat.
In the other, the stout old lady, wearing a long dress,
stands like a center piece with her feeding chickens
wreathed about her feet.
Witch's Brooms
The old people called them witch's brooms,
those bristling knots of twigs
That bud in spring into green tufts
like fists of gathered leaves.
But spiteful winter plucks them bare
And then they clutch the cold, black air,
arthritic hands that tremble.
And when the moon sits on the night,
a white bowl on a shelf,
They scratch the sky and make it cry,
those bristling knots called witch's brooms.
April First in England
In Kentucky the trillium is blooming now
And the catchfly will follow soon.
Last year I was in the hollows scrambling
over limestone rocks,
And listening to the creek sing beneath
the sycamores.
Today, in England, the daffodils beside the wall
stand in congregations,
And in the park, blue flowers, strange to me,
Are spread in patches like a lady's cape
flung upon the ground.
Later I will take a civil walk along the tended path
To where the swans are nesting in the pond.
The University Park
May morning when the breeze sways the whips of willows
budding green over the brown river,
And the cherry blossoms drop their petals in the grass.
Beside the pond, the Wychwood girls kneel and bend
To watch one draw the long dipper along the bottom,
trapping minnows for science class.
They are girls of an age: some thin, some tall, some with
hips and breasts,
But all children yet who run from spot to spot impatiently
sure the best is always just beyond.
One calls, "Bridget, come quickly. Here's a stickleback!"
And Becky, Helen, and Penney run to see, their brown and black hair
shaking in the sun.
An old gentleman sitting on a bench props his cane against
his knee and unfolds the Times,
While his wife leading the pup along the path spreads crumbs
for sparrows.
The girls, taking up their pail and dripping net, half walk,
half run down the path where the beech trees are budding red.
Across the pond the mother swan stands on her cattail nest
and preens her breast
As five gray cygnets jostle in the sun.
How the Lady Became a Poet
"My eighth grade teacher drank," she said,
"And was too tipsy to give lessons.
So we learned lines and lines of poetry
Which we recited before the class.
She would lean back and close her eyes,
And through dark winter afternoons
Listen to our childish voices.
The poetry was a lull and charm
And an open door for her tired and fretted mind.
I learned 'Horatio at the Bridge,' and 'Young Lochinvar,'
and many pieces more.
They set their tunes a running in my mind.
And I hear them always like a score behind my days.
New Poem in an Old Book
I took a volume from the shelf
and thumbed it through
And found a fem pressed
between the pages.
That perfect leaf made a poem for me
about a sunny day
When a girl sat in a shade
That spread about her like a skirt,
And her green thoughts grew like this leaf,
in patterns of cool lace.
Rain Song
On a cool and cloudy evening I walked
along the river
As the rain tapped at my umbrella
And teased the quiet water in a million places.
There was no other sound until suddenly
A song came light and faint across the river
from the path beyond.
There a girl on the willow walk sang
beneath a blue umbrella;
She sang lightly and with ease as if to sing
were nothing more than another way to breathe,
And with pleasure overfilled she was careless
how she spilled her joy onto the air.
The Marston Meadows
They have mowed the buttercups and raked the hay
into long green hills,
From the hedgerow to the river.
I am sorry to see their beauty pass,
But where is there room for love of flowers
when the cattle must be fed?
The million bits of sun that were shining
from the grass
Must hold their heat until some January day
When the herd stands in a broken circle
round the farmer;
Then, cutting the twine, he will kick loose the hay,
Giving back the sun of May to the cold and hungry cattle.
Mid-Day Publications
CHARLES PHILLIPS: FLAT CREEK
poems: Charles Phillips 1979
To my old friends in Kentucky
and my new friends in England
ISBN:0 906226 14 7 (ordinary edition) 0 906226 1 5 5
(signed edition of
25 numbered copies)
published 1979 by
Mid-Day Publications Ltd,
Old Fire Station Arts Centre, 40 George Street,
Oxford OXI 2AQ
the financial assistance of the Southern Arts Association
is gratefully acknowledged
produced by Neil Astley
at Tyneside Free Press Workshop
E-mail comments to Charles Phillips
Charles Phillips, Associate Professor of English
Southside Virginia Community College John H. Daniel Campus, Keysville, VA 23947
