from Blackwater Quartet, selection 7

Diary of a Has-Been

Others waved goodbye.
 
Slow-motion, shoeshine station
a freezeframe of the ’40s,
I doze in the sidings— dog-latin phantom
riding high to Dixie.

Blue-alcohol lightning evaporates,
near the Gulf Coast highway
knuckles of rolling freight stretched, shunting
miles of track down to Mobile.
 
The neon at The Blue Moon
sputters a scissor-cut geometry
through the ceiling fan’s slow circuit,
teasing layered haze from tables
where the cards are cut.
 
Rough ghosts roll out at closing,
the bootleg precinct of the turning mind, the last breath
the knife blade catches,
a notion of time, of worlds fallen
between minutes, reborn as other worlds,
but not in this place where times are torn.
 
I stand beneath the awning
in the horizontal rains, crazed stucco mottled white
and yellow shutters banging.
 
Winds define the bottleneck peninsula,
the string of traffic lights a testament
to nervous gods we praised.
 
Providence settles in soft light through
broken panes, past ragged palms
and gathered grains of discontent, of losses
not lifted when the highway called.
 
The storms fade into the lower Keys, guttering in Cuba.
 
A lizard basks in the alphabet sun,
jewelled shadow stalled.

The Lost Corvette

Recently, I read that a 12-metre sinkhole (40 feet, in old money) had opened up under the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky, with the loss of several classic cars. 

Sinkholes result when sub-surface limestone (or similar) is eroded by groundwater passing through the pourous rock, leaving small gaps and fissures that eventually connect into larger voids. Beneath its rolling "bluegrass" and rugged woods, Kentucky itself is one big chunk of limestone, the result of the area having been covered by an inland sea several hundred millions of years ago. 

I know this, not because I'm a geologist, but because I was born there, and lived there for more than thirty years. Walk along any country path and you'll find that the stones and gravel beneath your feet are in fact petrified shells and plants from this ancient sea.

One summer, probably around 1958, my family drove down to Mammoth Cave National Park, and stayed in a small local hotel for a day or two, to explore the vast cave system there. It was at that time in its earlier incarnation as a commerical venture as part of the U.S. National Park Service.

"The Park preserves the cave system and a part of the Green River valley and hilly country of south central Kentucky. This is the world's longest known cave system, with more than 400 miles explored. Early guide Stephen Bishop called the cave a "grand, gloomy and peculiar place," but its vast chambers and complex labyrinths have earned its name - Mammoth." So much for the brochure....

The groundwater erosion over thousands of years created the vast system, and I think at one time explorers thought the system linked into a large group of caves in Tennessee. Not sure what happened with that.

A few things come to mind about that visit. As a family, we never had holidays in the sense of contemporary expectations of travel, so it was a big deal to go anywhere. As tourists, we saw what still are unusual things: a long, low (stone) ceiling space set out as a cafeteria, cavernous (literally) spaces that could be described as cathedral-like, an underground river with boats, and small, semi-transparent fish with no eyes.

I also remember walking along a narrow passageway, itself the result of erosion through rocks, the smooth, sheer stone faces rising vertically on either side of the trail. We made our way along, as part of a larger group of tourists, and I suddenly stopped, pressing my hands stiff-armed against the walls either side, shouting back to my parents and sister, "Quick! Go through! I'll hold back the walls!" I noted that both my parents were struggling not to burst out laughing, as their eight-year old son did something stupid, and funny.

The other thing I remember was that as we made our way through the passage into another space, I felt my Father's hand rest on my shoulder, which I registered with a thrill of delight. I can say with some degree of conviction that he was not a physically demonstrative man, apart from punishments, and to have this display of spontaneous affection from him was as strange as rowing along a dark river, a darkness that remained "gloomy and peculiar" unless struck by the light of a guide's torch.

I like to imagine one of the missing Corvettes eventually popping up though some deep fissure, sliding along silently through dark water, and reflected there in its candy-coloured lacquer, a fish, eyeless, through its soap-bubble skin its tiny white heart, beating and beating. 

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 6

Raising Dixie Jesus

Floating weightless
in the focus of the prism, a true believer
balanced in the Brownie’s bubble viewer:
it’s Easter,1958.
The screen door knocks closing.
I stand unruffled,
formal in the formality of the blessed.
 
Mother steadies and the shutter pops.
The two-tone, pink on pink
of our high-finned family Dodge
fades to black and white.
On the morning of the risen dead
I stare into its headlight glare and wait for my release.
 
In the Methodist church at the top of Main,
the organ’s vox humana brocades
John Wesley’s silvery, lowbrow rhymes,
in the nave Christ espalier, the greenstick break of day
born in frantic pastorals
where sops from Proverbs pasteurise the dead.
 
The fallen fall still,
broken in the levees and the jambalaya farms,
Africans hanging lantern-like
from neo-classical façades.
Nothing saves you from yourself.
The panorama of the sky and all below it
perish in a whisper, reborn in Alabama.
 
…I clock in at the factory, chasing overtime on Sundays—
home later in the yard, washing the pickup,
the cherryflake metallic paint
so bright, I could reach right through
to touch that other face, beyond that trick of light
the brother so familiar. 

He comes to me then, in the heat of the day
hard by the axletree, where rebel lords
repair the fierce horizon.