about the house to play in, but I recall
the chilling dullness of the winter sky
and firs so still I almost heard them breathing.
I thought it wasn’t Jack, but Robert Frost,
Who made them live in such a cold repose.
Within two weeks another poet died,
her head in a cold gas oven. No poem
of hers was broadcast to my family.
Years would pass before I learned her name.
The old man in his woods, the young mother
dying with two babies near—such vanity
and madness framed the choices both had made—
the way he stuck it out, the way she lost it.
I’ve tried to cast my lot with that old man,
but something in her fate tugs at me too.
She can’t have known the cause célèbre she’d be,
wanting to leave the world for leaving her.
The world goes on despite us and our poems,
snow falling in woods, or not falling,
lights coming on in houses, lights going out,
but I feel grateful that my father stopped
the car that January day, his head
almost bowed as he left the radio on.
SWIMMERS ON THE SHORE
Like half a filial circus act
splashing the Y pool shallow end,
I swam about my father, who could stand.
And when I climbed, an acrobat,
diving from his muscled shoulders,
they seemed as solid as two boulders.
Now I can hold his shrunken frame
in my arm’s compass. We’re together
on a park bench in lingering summer weather
before I make the long drive home.
But halfway through some story, speech
lies suddenly beyond his reach.
I see him cast for words, and fail.
Though talking never came with ease,
it is as if my father’s memories
dissolve in a cedar-darkened pool,
while I no longer am aware
which of us goes fishing there.
Has he begun the long swim out
toward silence that we all half dread?
I hug my father’s shoulders, lean my head
closer to his, yet I cannot,
from his unfinished sentences,
quite fathom where or who he is.
I want to stay. The day is warm,
the salt breeze blows across the Sound
long plaintive cries of seagulls sailing down
to hover over churning foam
there in the docking ferry’s wake.
I want to stay for my own sake,
holding the man who once held me
until I dove and splashed about.
He gives my hand a squeeze. There is no doubt,
despite his loss of memory,
and though the words could not be found,
it’s I who have begun to drown.
from THE COUNTRY I REMEMBER 1966
THE COUNTRY I REMEMBER: A NARRATIVE
The campfire embers are black and cold,
The banjos are broken, the stories are told,
The woods are cut down, and the young grown old.
—W. H. Auden, Paul Bunyan
How We Came This Far
Mrs. Maggie Gresham, Los Angeles, two years before her death in 1956:
The rattle and sway of the train as it clattered across
leagues of open grassland put me to sleep,
and I dreamed of Illinois where land was flat
and safe as anything that I had known.
I woke to find my sisters counting bones
on the prairie, and the sky beyond our smoke
was a dusty blue. We were heading west.
Papa slept beneath his broad-brimmed hat
and Mama sewed—she made the pinafore
that I was wearing. I knelt beside my sisters,
watching land go by from the wooden seat
like waves of a great ocean being tossed.
The snow had melted, and everywhere it seemed
were bones like cages with no birds inside.
We’d packed a cheese, a stack of pies, boiled ham
and jars of fruit preserves from our old farm.
The Indians would come aboard each stop,
begging for food, or selling calico.
In Cheyenne my sister Beatrice had croup
and Mr. Kress said to take some snuff with lard
and spread it on her throat—that cured her quick.
I remember looking out the train at night,
trying to count the dark shapes passing by
and seeing our faces pressed against the glass
like children looking back from another world.
I thought of bones in the embrace of weeds,
of Indians who vanished on the prairie,
of hills that swayed and rumbled like our train.
Had my Papa brought us to this empty place
in desperation? I watched his regal head
nodding on his chest, the long V of beard
flowing over his crossed and worsted arms.
I was the happiest child when we had left
the farm, but now I prayed
the night would not destroy us like the lost.
The poets told us that this land was new
but, though I was a child, I understood
it was as ancient as the word of God,
and we were like those wandering tribes of old;
no one had chosen us to travel west,
and it would serve no purpose for a girl
to question choices that her parents made.
I knew this fear would always follow me
wherever I went, that I was not real,
that no one really lived who bore my name.
The lamplit face upon the swaying glass
was all that I would ever know of truth.
When Mama snuffed the lamp, my other face
retreated to the land of passing shadows.
Next morning while our mother brewed our tea
on one of the coal stoves inside the car,
I felt us being hauled away from dawn
by force of steam, and heard my Papa speak
to Mr. Kress of wars that he had fought in—
they whispered so we children wouldn’t hear,
and Mr. Kress no longer looked so jolly.
The war that made my Papa look so old
happened in Tennessee and in Virginia
long before my sisters and I were born.
War had taught my Papa to stand up straight.
War gave him his heavy cough each winter,
but we had never heard the things I heard
intended for the ears of Mr. Kress.
Then the tea was ready and the two men
roused us children for another day.
They knew the reason we were heading west
and understood the bones out in the grass.
They were like prophets of the holy book
interpreting the tablets for the tribe,
and we the children of an Israel
unspoken for except by all the dead.
The Kresses said goodbye to us out West.
From Portland we went inland on the river—
strange to be pointed toward the East again
as if our path were the snake that eats its tail.
After the rivers and mountains of our journey
the land we traveled through was dry and grassy,
and Papa kept his stories to himself.
He paced the riverboat, nodding at land
because he’d known some part of it in youth
and memory had made him bring us back.
Washington Territory
looked for all we knew like the Holy Land,
and 1880 was our
year of hope
and we believed our Papa understood
what made the wind blow steady off the buttes.
Papa bought the ranch near Pomeroy
and he had the first-ever frame house built
in the Blue Mountains, which were more like hills.
There the little savagery of childhood
ran its course—we tried to be young ladies,
but winters were hard; we had to dig out,
keeping an axe and shovel in the house.
Snow drifted over the fields and filled the lanes,
so Papa built a sled with a wagon box
and we rode to school over the tops of fences.
I had a dog named Buster who got lost
in a thick blizzard. Some of the men rode out
but saw no sign of him until that spring
a passing cowboy said he’d seen the bones.
Time passed. I thought of Buster on the prairie
and how we came this far from Illinois,
counting the bones beside the railroad tracks.
The snow had gone. The hills were turning green
and I was tired of all our little chores
on Papa’s ranch, tired of staying home
with only a slow spinsterhood before me.
We came this far, and maybe I could go
farther on my own. Paper had slowed down
but wandering was in my blood—and his—
and he would have to understand my going
and how no place had ever been my home.
As long as I was moving there was hope
that I would find the place we all had sought—
even my Papa, back when he was young.
Cobb’s Orchard
Lt. Mitchell shortly before his death
at Pomeroy, Washington, in 1918:
A hungry army’s enough to spook the dead
the way it marches on without a sound,
only the clatter of our gear and wagons,
a noise of hoof and boot hemmed in by hills.
We were in McCook’s force, pushing south,
the western flank of Rosecrans’ three corps
butting General Bragg from Chattanooga.
Two days out of Goldsboro we ran short
of rations, feeding off the countryside.
The first day without food my boys made do
with coffee. After that my colored man
went out with a sack to gather what he could.
He caught up when we camped on Willow Creek,
a heap of elderberries all he’d found.
“We’ll feast on ’em,” I said. The 79th
had gathered hay enough for all our horses.
My company had elderberry juice,
cooked in kettles and coffee pots, for supper.
My Captain said, “Men, shake out your haversacks
for crumbs,” but there weren’t enough to feed a bird
and the men fell quiet, looking at their boots.
Charley was my colored man. He’d no horse
so I give him fifty cents to hire one,
told him to find our regimental sutler
back with the main force over the divide.
Next morning, Charley and the sutler came
right when the bugle sounded us to march,
and brought two wagons loaded down with food.
His people were still slaves, but Charley was free
and come to work for me not long after
we formed the 79th in Illinois.
The boys had voted me Lieutenant ’cause
I’d done a bit of fighting in the West—
bought me a fine sword I was proud to wear.
Charley kept it polished till it gleamed.
I meant to ask him where his people were,
but never did. He couldn’t read a map.
He told me once he didn’t want the Rebs
to catch him, fearing they would sell his hide.
When we got whipped at Chickamauga, Charley
had no place left to run. He just stood still
and waited for the Rebs to get a rope.
But all that hadn’t happened when he rode for food . . .
Two more days with no supplies. We foraged
off the countryside as best we could.
I saw a Negro with his hat in his hand
ahead of us on the run. Charley and I
rode out to stop him. I wanted to know
what he was running from and if he knew
of anything out here to feed my men.
“Yes Suh,” he says, pointing with his old hat.
He told of an orchard, five acres of fine
ripe peaches that belong to Senator Cobb.
“They’s a rise and a ridge with a basin ’tween the two
and right over that’s a gulch and over that
they’s peaches enough for all you Yankees there.”
I rode back and reported to my Colonel.
“Colonel,” I says, “perhaps you can recall
an ex-Senator Cobb who owns the land
not far over that rise.” I said I wanted
men and wagons to feed the regiment.
He left me go with twenty-one infantry,
an able Sergeant, sixteen cavalrymen
for front and rear guards, the wagons and mules.
We found the orchard right where we were told,
and I got the boys to cut their way to it,
building a road so the wagons could cross the gulch.
We laid our ponchos underneath the trees
and shook loose peaches so ripe you could smell them,
filled two wagons, keeping one on reserve
It was a warm September day. The smell
of grass and dust and peaches hung in the air.
Except for our harvest sounds, all was silent.
As far as we could see, no people worked
the fields. All the men was fighting, I guess,
and who knows where the women hid themselves
with two great armies harvesting the land?
I took my mounted men across the hill
to a large mansion, where I hollered, “Hello!”
A fat man stepped out who was full of whiskey.
“We have twenty-five thousand starving men,”
I told him. “If you have any food to give
I will receipt you for it. Swear loyalty
and you’ll get paid.”
“Damn your receipt,” he said.
The boys unslung carbines to do him in
but I said we were only here for food
so let him be. The fat man cast an eye
up the ridge to my right, and there I saw
a mess of graycoats coming over the rise.
I give the order and we spurred our horses
down where my men had backed the empty wagon
to a corn crib. They had filled it with white corn
and I said, “Boys, the Rebs are after us!”
By this time I could hear their rebel yell
and thought a hail of Minié balls would hit us.
You never saw a mule team move so fast
as ours did, but I knew the Rebs were faster.
When we reached the road I had the wagons stop.
I had the teamsters run their mules to cover
and ordered the boys to line up double quick
in groups ten feet apart. The Rebs had stopped
on the hill behind us. I drew my sword
and let the sunlight catch it so they could see
the Yanks were ready for them. My Seargeant
was a big, hot fellow who wanted to fight.
He knew the Rebs could hear him so he said,
“You folks want our grub, you’ll have to come on down.”
We saw that they were not ready to come;
they couldn’t tell h
ow many men I had.
Our pickets had some trouble the day before,
so I said, “Boys, give ’em hell.” I had them fire
four separate volleys for just three minutes.
The Vidette Cavalry rode up to see
our fight in time to watch the Rebs back off.
My men let out three cheers for the enemy.
Then we were on our way with wagons full,
two of peaches, one of corn and brandy.
The shooting warmed us up enough. I knew
the boys on foot stepped lighter than before.
Looking up, I saw birds fly between the trees
and disappear amid the tangled branches.
They seemed to follow us and share our joy,
lighthearted creatures made for a bit of song.
It took me back, I don’t mind telling you,
as if this road led back to my family’s farm,
turned west, and opened to the vast beyond.
But soldiers do like honey. At some bee stands
those who’d stolen a nip of brandy tried
to rob the hives. They had a worse skirmish
with those bees than the one with Johnny Reb.
You never saw so many stung-up fellows
raising dust as they leapt about the road.
I ordered a nip of brandy all round.
Half a mile on we saw hogs in the brush.
I rode to a nearby house and there found
an old couple dressed in homespun, sitting
in the shade of an oak. I asked about the hogs.
“Yes, Suh, we’ve seven if you count Old Betty.”
“We have twenty-five thousand starving men,”
I told them. “I’ll receipt you for those hogs.
If you’re loyal, you’ll get paid. If not,
you’ll get nothing.”
“Hell, Yankee,” the old man said,
“I’m as loyal as you are. I love the old flag.
Mother and I just have to play rebel.”
Mother said, “Let them Yankees have the hogs.
The Rebs will take them if you don’t. Let them
have all but Old Betty, save Old Betty.”
The boys went out and shot down six hogs,
all but Old Betty. I figured they were
two hundred pounds apiece, five cents a pound,