A Tent beside a River

Remembering lanterned, canvas-sprawled fields

of the county, we gathered for dream's sake

under the roof of the blue nylon tent,

opened Bible and Baptist hymnal

under a flashlight's yellow stain

to call into play our own miracle.

And afraid we'd be found out of bed,

sang in whispers the few songs

we could sing, to be heard only

by the One we wanted to hear.

Then I, who could read best,

read what I could from the Scripture,

my breath the rustle of leaves

over a lip of open water.

For in the house at the yard's heart,

our grandfather lay dreaming of Jordan,

his face gone pale as the light

shining through his curtained window,

a lamp they would not turn off

as though it kept him from crossing

by anchoring his shadow beside him.

For an hour in the star-bright yard

choirs of crickets echoed hymns

and short winds chorded the trees.

Then, far off in the tall dark

of pines beyond the house,

an owl with a voice deeper than time

announced the lateness of the hour.

We were new at grief, and weak,

and let ourselves fall toward sleep,

forgot the house and the lamp,

the old man wrestling his shadow.

But this is not entirely true.

When the tent flap snared the dark,

a light came on behind our eyes

and each of us saw him a special way.

Then the owl came down to find us,

whistled a note of departure,

and, real or not, we remembered

a shadow drifting over the roof.

They found us, too, in morning light,

huddled in a ball like a litter

of strays, and rousted us with voices

nervy and crisp as the air,

as though children had never dreamed of such,

nor their words ferried anyone safely anywhere.

THE DESK

Under the fire escape, crouched, one knee in cinders,

I pulled the ball-peen hammer from my belt,

cracked a square of window pane,

the gummed latch, and swung the window,

crawled through that stone hole into the boiler room

of Canton Elementary School, once Canton High,

where my father served three extra years

as star halfback and sprinter.

Behind a flashlight's

cane of light, I climbed a staircase almost a ladder

and found a door. On the second nudge of my shoulder,

it broke into a hallway dark as history,

at whose end lay the classroom I had studied

over and over in the deep obsession of memory.

I swept that room with my light-an empty blackboard,

a metal table, a half-globe lying on the floor

like a punctured basketball-then followed

that beam across the rows of desks,

the various catalogs of lovers, the lists

of all those who would and would not do what,