For the September Red Eft video, our guest poet is Robert Morgan.
The minute I read Morgan’s “Brownfield,” I dog-eared the page. I knew I'd go back to it someday, for it spoke to my belief that we
might find grace in wounded places. In fact, I’d once created a painting of my own that it immediately evoked, a work I titled Landfill.
might find grace in wounded places. In fact, I’d once created a painting of my own that it immediately evoked, a work I titled Landfill.
I merged that image with Robert’s telling words for this
first piece on the video.
The second poem, “Jar Fly,” offers its grace to a small
often-ignored insect: the mysterious cicada, who—like us—creates
love
ballads.
[For more about Robert
Morgan see the bio and links below.]
“Brownfield” and “Jar Fly”
________________________________________________________________________________
Brownfield
The lot that’s poisoned by a
spill
of toluene or gasoline
and tons of industrial swill
and drops of mercury
dispersed
among the bits of asbestos
and rusting nails and
tangled coils
with scattered beads of
Styrofoam
all tossed among the posts
and beams
of rotting wood and toads of
grease,
exploded garbage bags and
inks
on asphalt floes, and silty
sinks,
is touched in one remote
spot by
an ironweed’s purple
mystery.
Jar Fly
The cry is more a seethe
than song,
high in the oaks, a call at once
bone-dry and juicy, blast so
loud
it seems a thousand rattlesnakes
are giving furious warning,
so wild it’s near impossible
to spot the source. The
insect, called
cicada in most places, here
was known as jar fly, since
the kids,
if they could catch one,
sealed it in
a jar and watched its
finger-small
anatomy vibrate inside
the amplifying bulb to light
the evening calm with
serenade,
with fanfare, rasping
anthem.
But what was usually found
in woods
was not the tiny rock star
itself
but just the husk of skin it
shed
before it soared into the
trees
to rock the lazy summer
breeze
for hours on end with love
ballad.
________________________________________________________________________________
“Brownfield” and “Jar Fly” were published in Terroir (Penguin
Books, 2011).
Robert Morgan is the author of fourteen books of poetry, most recently Dark Energy (Penguin Books, 2015). Morgan
has also published nine volumes of fiction, including Gap Creek, a New York Times
bestseller. Among numerous awards,
he has received the Academy Award in
Literature from the American
Academy
the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations. Born
in Hendersonville , North
Carolina (where he’d collected cicadas, himself, as a boy), he later
moved to upper New York where he’s taught at Cornell University
For more about Robert
Morgan, visit the author’s website: http://www.robert-morgan.com
