A Life of Trauma

For several months in 2021, I helped my friend L. R. capture the story of his abusive childhood, his years as a bully, and his slow maturation into a loving and loved father and husband. It's a happy ending, but not an easy one; L R. has many physical and psychological scars that limit his mobility and his options in life.

Our process: L. R. dictated short passages into a digital recorder; I transcribed, with the help of Descript, and then we added new materials, corrected, and re-arranged, until we came up with a finished manuscript. 

Why purchase: It's a quick read and an honest account. Your purchase will help L. R. and his family through a difficult time. 

A Song
​A poem for the sycamore,
a sycamore for the snake
that swims in the shallows
sheltered by its roots, roots
for the land, to hold it in place,

land for the sycamore, on whose
long thick limb we’ve lain
cantilevered over the river
in shade, shade as blue as a jay’s
feathers and free to all comers.

* * *

A poem for board feet standing
in a mane of leaves fluttered by air
of their own making, air
for poet and spouse,
poet and spouse for each other

and land and snake
and river and sycamore,
sycamore for the leaves,
leaves for the air, air for the song
of marriage we are singing.

* * *

Those who venture off trail--
booted against snakes,
whistling Colonel Bogey’s March,
surveyor’s maps rolled underarm--
see dimity patterns

the roots make on ground
checkered with shadow and light,
and with every step are wary:
clutters of leaves may strike,
the stepped-on stick bite back.

* * *

Those tongues flicker
to find us out, warm-blooded
calculators who fell
and bark, slab and mill
through knot and burl

till the tree of knowledge
is pollarded and bare,
a lacquered coat rack
where perch the birds
of abstraction.

* * *

This sycamore rising dog-legged--
or is it a god’s leg, or that
of a god’s horse straining
the wooden musculature
to rear against the bit?--

is hard to fix in words
that do not hobble the power,
but when saw and dozer
cut their buck and wing,
easy to reckon the board feet.

* * *

By this border of blooming
surveyor’s flags in weeks
we’ll step arm in arm
then do-si-do over hardwood;
on a bed as wide as a pond

glimpse in our dreams
afternoons that stretched
a heron’s wing over the river
in woods whose high crowns
for us have been lopped and pulped

* * *

and made into this paper
on whose void the words
elusive as a swarm of gnats
reeling and spinning
bless our reading chair,

our table where a boy
not long from Africa
types the home row letters:
lads fall; all sad lads;
half sad half glad: all fall;

* * *

bless the safe place we have made,
the wooden bowl on the table,
the fruit that fills it, the gnats
eating the ripe fruit, the fruit
of prayer and meditation;

and bless the headboard in whose
shadow we dream the tree
whose fruit we are—logger,
surveyor, poet and spouse,
lads: same tree, same fruit.  
​
Published in Mouth Work (St. Andrews University Press, 2016)
Hope, by Cynthia Reeves (1979)

ANYCE SHEPHERD

The murder of her deputy sheriff husband in 1938 begins my grandmother's fifty-year widowhood. 

NIGHT WEATHER

The quietness of haiku in a book designed and profusely illustrated in color by Katie LaRosa. 

MOUTH WORK

Prize-winning poems on the power of language and love. 

MISSISSIPPI LAWYER

Love letters from a crafty lawyer, William Maybin.
Trying to Break Through, Cynthia Reeves, 1984. 

Trying to Break Through

Every writer dreams of breaking through - to a deeper, richer language; to a greater understanding of the world; to an appreciative, buying audience. This painting by Cynthia Reeves expresses that longing, as well as the commitment to continue even if the breakthrough remains elusive. 

Contact

jsabsherphd@gmail.com