Poetry by Jim Barnes
The following poems are from On a Wing of the Sun: Three Volumes of Poetry. Copyright 2001 by Jim Barnes. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press.
On the Bridge of Fourche Maline River
Forty feet below, the water stands as dull
as dog days. No movement toward the lake
ten snaking miles away. You stand here full
of hope you have always been told to have,
with no regard for the ruined years, those rabid
foxes at your heels.
You stop here whenever
you have the time. The river’s pull is strong.
The dark water, too thick and slow to reflect
anything outside itself, sends a constant song.
Worlds away you always know the river
is your home. You’ve never seen the river
run toward its sea. Yet it moves at the touch
when you take time to go down, lay your hands
on the warm river, and speak to the current
that flows into and through your blood.
It has
been years since you swam this muddy stream
and, bearing a rock for ballast, walked the bottom
straight across, bank to bank, in the longest breath
you ever held. Time and time again, as now,
you dream that walk. This time it’s real. You leave
your clothes flapping on the rail and jump, wide,
into the warm water and feel the river
bottom wrap a gentle skin about your feet.
As you break upward for breath, you taste
the sweet meat of earth the river is made of,
and you remember the earth and that you are home.
Autobiography, Chapter XIV:
Tombstone at Petit Bay, near Tahlequah
Looking for the artifacts that map your world less read,
you find the obelisk, dwarfed among the weeds;
knee high and almost growing from the chert
hillside, it hides its legend like night the
features of a face.
You read the date, 1839. And the one faint vertical
word, child, in Sikwayi script. The grave where
no grave should be gently shocks your senses
clean: each fracture of chert is bone. You feel
a sudden reverence for all stone.
Years you’ve quested in these hills, a running search
for something still you cannot name—something
holy, proof of migration or lost Phoenician sailors.
You are tempted toward a gentle excavation, but know
you will not dig into the earth for the same
reason you never move the soil except to plant.
The obelisk casts a shadow longer than its length.
The narrow darkness leans along the hill, toward
the bay and the slow moon rising from the fabled
east.