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Poetry by Carl Selph

Page 15

"Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
        I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun.."
                           --  W.B.Yeats

 

Tulip, Ark.

  
In Tulip there are no tulips
and in this sad south no magnolia trees.
Even way back the belles were big and countrified:
no brocade or satin
no small green velvet slippers
no colored aunts and uncles;
just pale blue eyes and red hands
homespun and cheap cotton.
The houses then were small
and gray from long dry spells
under a glittering polished sun
and small they are now
and yellow outside with dust by day
and yellow inside by night
with fly-specked naked bulbs.
No wide shady verandas
or fluted columns upholding classic porticoes
no grand pianos brought up from New Orleans
or floated down from St. Louis
no broad acres with singing field hands.
No, none of these ever
or ever
in this South
in this bleached dismisser of romance.
      
 
Almost there was glory once.
      
 
The old men kick the shavings
under lacy-whittled benches
and spit and talk of ifs and whens.
If Tulip had got two more votes
she would have beat Little Rock
and where we sit might be the hollow
underneath a marble dome.
This might be a big hotel
or streetcar tracks
or rich-men's stores.
By the lack of just two votes
the dry bulb died that might have bloomed.
The people died.
The French schoolteacher moved away.
      
 
The old men sadly shake their heads
and bite fresh chews from strong brown twists.
The dust raised by a dusty car
stains the bright hard air.
      
 
In Tulip there are no tulips
and in this sad South no magnolia trees.
      

© Carl Selph, 1951
    First published in Preview 
                  

Children Playing on Sunday

 
 
The little boy beneath the blue-john sky
Gives his still littler brother rushing rides
Across the parking lot, his vehicle
A double-decker supermarket cart.
They neither speak nor shout, but dedicate
Themselves to traveling through their asphalt realm;
Only on Sundays is this black space theirs.
      
 
Watching the boys at play, I try to think
How I may turn this circumstance to verse,
Remembering creeks where willow trees let down
In March ribbons of willow green, and huts
Of sticks and leaves where my brother and I
Housed our imaginations all week long.
      

© Carl Selph, 1951
    First published in Descant 
                  

Butchering

 
The barn doors are wide open to make room
for the calf hanging chained by its hind legs
to the pulley hay-wired to the overhead beam.
I smell lespedeza and manure and goat.
My uncle has ground the knife himself.
It is exactly sharp enough.
The calf's eyes have shown their whites
from greed at the udder, in stiff-legged play,
and now.  My uncle cuts the throat just right
and blood spurts into the dried pig-tracks.
He is a hard-working man with five children
and a crippled wife he loves.  He is good
at butchering goats and hogs and calves
and makes the best hickory-smoked sausage
you've ever tasted.  He farms all summer,
plowing behind two mules.  When the cotton's sold
and the weather's right, he kills the animals
and peddles the meat from the bed of his pickup.
He has no lack of customers; they know his quality.
I watch him with real interest as he slits the paunch
and neatly pulls and cuts out liver, lights,
heart, and the gleaming guts.  I am young enough
to look clear-eyed at almost anything.
      

© Carl Selph, 1999

 

Turning the Corner

 
Turning the corner at the old hotel,
I walk the gravel street.  It's hot.   Tadpoles
dart in the weedy, green ditches, like black
watermelon seeds with tails.  Two privies
back onto the alley.  There's Mr. George
and Miss Pearl's yellow frame house, the sun-burned
pine brush-arbor the Holy Rollers built
for their revival meeting -- the shouting,
speaking in tongues:  all still here, as they were:
the white dust, the bell in mid-week suspense
in the Baptist church steeple, Sis' Kate screened
on her porch, rocking, keeping watch.  I come
to Mama's house, wire-fenced, long two-by-fours
I used to wire-walk on nailed post to post,
and stand, heart in my throat, at the iron gate.
      
 
Will the front door open?  Who will come out?
It does.  He's six-years old.  Mother-of-pearl
buttons hold his blue shorts to his white shirt.
He's put his belt on by himself, as he's done
for at least a year now.  At the top step
he waits.  No smile.  It's my move next.  I think
I can detect in his weak brown eyes--what?
I hope I look friendly, kind.  I wonder
if I can bear it if he goes back in.
The gate is open.  I hold out my hand.
He takes it, hesitates, and hugs my legs.
      
 
Mother and Daddy, from the shady porch,
regard us gently as we turn and wave.
      

© Carl Selph, 1992
    First published in the San Miguel Writer 
                  

Exodus

 
My exodus from the grass green days
     (when my ship sailed the puddles and never sank
     and the pines and the buttercups after rain
     were too technicolored to be real
     and my pony was a thundering steed
     that charged with the proudest and in my canyons
     led me to rustlers and came at my whistle
     and my bike was a roadster leaning at corners
     and humming around curves my private song
     and music came from my growing fingers
     and light from my lips and my eyes)
Passed with no splitting of seas, few plagues, and no armies,
When I wasn't paying attention.
      

© Carl Selph, 1955
    First published in The Colorado Quarterly 
                

All text on this page is copyrighted by Carl Selph and appears here by permission. All rights reserved. It may not be archived beyond one personal electronic copy for offline reading; such a copy must include the entire text of the present notice and the author's name. It may not be printed, posted on a web-site, distributed publicly or privately, used or quoted in whole or in part, or published in any manner or form whatsoever without the author's explicit permission. E-mail Wordreign to contact Carl Selph and your request will be promptly forwarded.

 

 

 

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