Catskills Elegy

Cheryl Clarke

catskills elegy: journal entry

last five miles of the drive upstate dissolved in pink-orange late afternoon sun  bared of my soul bored of my mind  two arresting beings appear: a beauteous black brown stallion sporting its fierce rider in dark gear black brown mane flipping  in time with the stallion’s own  holding reins closely and fully astride unpredictability  turning stallion sharply its gorgeous head and mane flat to the wind south onto our rural route and me heading north in late model sedan turning​ half-circle sharply against the country traffic to track the fierce riders.

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Too Much To Bear[1]

‘Three Irons—

a mother of six

whose body . . . .'

What must her children have thought

when she was brought 

to her sad mother?

One child asks,

Did she hurt

long

in those cool mountains?

Her sad mother explains, 

An eagle shot by a greedy hunter,

Many deaths in these mountains.

Many bodies.

Many mothers daughters sisters aunties grandmoms

         girlfriends missing and dead

         reduced to the exigencies of extractive practices.

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Tree down

            Floods strike every place my relations are,

            except Detroit.

                                              (Native of a flood zone)

Not here, not in the country, I’ve said all my life, 

trying to escape my Reconstruction past.

(Even when that hurricane struck D.C. in 1954,

blew out the window of our back door shards

raining down on my aunt, heavy winds and heavy glass 

slashing through her middle finger at once.

we staunched the bleeding with tea towels, gauze,  

 and electrical tape.

'though she shoulda had stitches,' my mother would say

every time she re-recounted this story. 

(who was gonna take her to get stitches in the middle of a hurricane, mother?)

not here, we said

        when the black-out hit new york city.

           when al quaeda struck new york city and d.c.

               when levees burst from gulf waters.

until last night, when torrential rains 

and high winds struck again. 

splitting our old london plain down the middle.

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Brevard

walked on the balls of his feet, especially when let outta jail

after behaving disorderly. Hannah, his wife, had him locked up,

fanning herself on the front porch watching him approach in

his rakish bowler.

Brevard was beloved of Edna, in that 1920 tintype, recently

discovered among Hannah’s keepsakes after Edna’s death.

Edna—aged 4 astride Brevard’s motorcycle frowning into the

camera while three other men laugh into the lens. Brevard

astride behind Edna holding her on the seat her hair loose

from its plaits, unkempt—shamed her in later years. And

made me wonder today, like Alice Walker, about a little girl

around a yard full of grown men, even her beloved cousin

among them and no woman in sight unless behind the box.

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survival artists

Refugees are art-

ists of survival, of corps-

es, mass and unmark-

        ed graves.

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Never Any Proof

Rev. Clarence  LaVaughn Franklin 

did anything but protect your mother,

Aretha, though rumor has it you, Clarence, 

her first-born is

Rev. C. L.’s son and

grandson—and a mess in Detroit.

Such legend hanging over you 

like the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh

all your life.

Your precocious mother  never confirming or denying 

the birth father—just 

that it wasn’t

Sam Cooke.

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