Hobble Creek Review
| Rex Walton |
Crossing the Ninnescah
for Bill Kloefkorn, and my father: brothers in the water
O, River Ninnescah:
this is a chant, an allegory, a story
made in the mud-sand bank
exactly holding this side of water
just as the other side sits
gentle against the far currents
making this green swirl
making and re-making itself
as a southern Kansas river
talk to me: a telling
a signing, a foretelling:
a sign ...
I am near Cheney, Kansas
where the Ninnescah
passes under the Highway:
car parked, I put my wallet
my keys, my comb, my lucky stone
I carry to remind me who I am:
I put them into the trunk: the dead
engine begins cooling: a tick and groan
harmonious with the engine
driving a thousand songs
coming out of the water:
a calling out a coming forth
Now I go down to the river:
now I go into the green
the grasses parting:
I carry my body as an offering:
a clunky chunk of old guy breathing
summer's humidity into timid lungs:
stacatto shrink and swell
the body gives
unthinkingly: I rattle along
down the corridor
parting grass and branch
my arms waving, my eyes touching,
my fists opening to air to chance to swirl
my shoes: cast back to the bank
my feet: sink into darkness
as my thighs: break a path to open currents
It is the River of my father's youth
a river once, and once again
floating the bodies
of imagination
trepidation delight
I let go begin to float down:
down the long lazy
flowering tumble roil:
it is a tremble a trance a long toil
of magician waving now this now that into
out of existence, of consequence, of condition:
now sandbar, now overhanging branch:
now a foam ridge edging an overhanging bank
almost to collapse: almost to fruition
Perhaps I will find
my father
around this next turning:
armpit-deep against the outside bank
water become an arcing snake-swirl path
carved into Kansas
by Ninnescah, O Ninnescah
It is 1929, or 30: my father
wades straining against the strength of current
reaching into the dark undercut
finding tension as a flathead catfish
all langour and hover: now,
my father shoving fingers and fist
deep in the gills: now,
the long desperation of pull against thrash
(fear mated to fear): now,
a roar and tumble
of water cat boy
It is immaterial, even frivolous:
in the long term, both fish and father
lose
In the long term, yes:
But here, we go on
with the Conversation
From that year to this one
a long pull on the tin cup:
I sit it down
into the deep well of its empty ringing
I sit, here:
feeling the residue of memory
as moss and slime of Ninnescah
inhabiting my bones.
I hear my father
tell me, as I have heard,
as I will: his
is this river: the Ninnescah
as he has shared it with me,
as I find Bill had, too,
floated almost merging
almost submerged almost submerging
in that same body of water
in that same country in Kansas
in the prime of his own discovery.
So, we talked of this:
memory: formed of
formed as
a primeval shovelhead catfish
finning the dark green
August water:
water as
warm as succulent as
creamed coffee:
a metronome of gills counting out
a metropolis of crayfish
a megapolis of panfish
feeding on the pinprick starshine
decorating the border region water makes
as it sits flat against
our darkness of air and space
O Ninnescah: to be sitting up
on a high grassy bank shoveling itself
one rain at a time
into the next version of oblivion
sitting together
between Bill and my father
discovering what we
already know
We talk, or sit, or curl up
on the lumpy mud bankside
ready to hold us up hold us in:
a fire started long ago
joins us, as we begin to see it, as we
begin finding the fortunate
sons within each are also
from the same fire
As the light spreads out
just far enough:
as the words gather
speed:
as the sky gathers
all the night within it:
as the telling foretells
itself:
as it gathers us: in
Now soon it is getting along
towards total night:
humidity closes in
with dusk in its teeth
forming a wall of sightlessness
so that we three sit as if in
a cabin by the stream
walled in by that night:
this slight space lit from within
by our desire to dream: so,
in that dreaming we wake
to our brotherhood beginnings
I feel it fit, somehow, a fitting
time of endings beginning
moments like this:
the long solitude
the body makes
as it wanders through
this world: solitude
all caught up with
humming reeling
shaking:
a dance really:
even while lost
frightened holy
desperate:
even while
crossing the avenue
or crossing myself
even though I'm not Catholic
or holy:
Even while
sitting on overturned ashcans
in the Department of Lost & Found
as we three gather more among us
trade novena offer namaste'
call on namesake
hug hallelujah send each other off
into the penetrating night
into the penetrating light
for Bill Kloefkorn, and my father: brothers in the water
O, River Ninnescah:
this is a chant, an allegory, a story
made in the mud-sand bank
exactly holding this side of water
just as the other side sits
gentle against the far currents
making this green swirl
making and re-making itself
as a southern Kansas river
talk to me: a telling
a signing, a foretelling:
a sign ...
I am near Cheney, Kansas
where the Ninnescah
passes under the Highway:
car parked, I put my wallet
my keys, my comb, my lucky stone
I carry to remind me who I am:
I put them into the trunk: the dead
engine begins cooling: a tick and groan
harmonious with the engine
driving a thousand songs
coming out of the water:
a calling out a coming forth
Now I go down to the river:
now I go into the green
the grasses parting:
I carry my body as an offering:
a clunky chunk of old guy breathing
summer's humidity into timid lungs:
stacatto shrink and swell
the body gives
unthinkingly: I rattle along
down the corridor
parting grass and branch
my arms waving, my eyes touching,
my fists opening to air to chance to swirl
my shoes: cast back to the bank
my feet: sink into darkness
as my thighs: break a path to open currents
It is the River of my father's youth
a river once, and once again
floating the bodies
of imagination
trepidation delight
I let go begin to float down:
down the long lazy
flowering tumble roil:
it is a tremble a trance a long toil
of magician waving now this now that into
out of existence, of consequence, of condition:
now sandbar, now overhanging branch:
now a foam ridge edging an overhanging bank
almost to collapse: almost to fruition
Perhaps I will find
my father
around this next turning:
armpit-deep against the outside bank
water become an arcing snake-swirl path
carved into Kansas
by Ninnescah, O Ninnescah
It is 1929, or 30: my father
wades straining against the strength of current
reaching into the dark undercut
finding tension as a flathead catfish
all langour and hover: now,
my father shoving fingers and fist
deep in the gills: now,
the long desperation of pull against thrash
(fear mated to fear): now,
a roar and tumble
of water cat boy
It is immaterial, even frivolous:
in the long term, both fish and father
lose
In the long term, yes:
But here, we go on
with the Conversation
From that year to this one
a long pull on the tin cup:
I sit it down
into the deep well of its empty ringing
I sit, here:
feeling the residue of memory
as moss and slime of Ninnescah
inhabiting my bones.
I hear my father
tell me, as I have heard,
as I will: his
is this river: the Ninnescah
as he has shared it with me,
as I find Bill had, too,
floated almost merging
almost submerged almost submerging
in that same body of water
in that same country in Kansas
in the prime of his own discovery.
So, we talked of this:
memory: formed of
formed as
a primeval shovelhead catfish
finning the dark green
August water:
water as
warm as succulent as
creamed coffee:
a metronome of gills counting out
a metropolis of crayfish
a megapolis of panfish
feeding on the pinprick starshine
decorating the border region water makes
as it sits flat against
our darkness of air and space
O Ninnescah: to be sitting up
on a high grassy bank shoveling itself
one rain at a time
into the next version of oblivion
sitting together
between Bill and my father
discovering what we
already know
We talk, or sit, or curl up
on the lumpy mud bankside
ready to hold us up hold us in:
a fire started long ago
joins us, as we begin to see it, as we
begin finding the fortunate
sons within each are also
from the same fire
As the light spreads out
just far enough:
as the words gather
speed:
as the sky gathers
all the night within it:
as the telling foretells
itself:
as it gathers us: in
Now soon it is getting along
towards total night:
humidity closes in
with dusk in its teeth
forming a wall of sightlessness
so that we three sit as if in
a cabin by the stream
walled in by that night:
this slight space lit from within
by our desire to dream: so,
in that dreaming we wake
to our brotherhood beginnings
I feel it fit, somehow, a fitting
time of endings beginning
moments like this:
the long solitude
the body makes
as it wanders through
this world: solitude
all caught up with
humming reeling
shaking:
a dance really:
even while lost
frightened holy
desperate:
even while
crossing the avenue
or crossing myself
even though I'm not Catholic
or holy:
Even while
sitting on overturned ashcans
in the Department of Lost & Found
as we three gather more among us
trade novena offer namaste'
call on namesake
hug hallelujah send each other off
into the penetrating night
into the penetrating light
REX WALTON has been writing poetry for nearly twenty-five
years, beginning in the mid 80s as a student at UNL. He co-edited
the English Department's Laurus, the undergraduate annual
magazine with Season Harper. His poetry has appeared in
journals such as Plainsong, and the Plains Song Review, and the
online journal, The Middlewesterner. Lately, he has been working
on Poetry at the Moon, a weekly reading series at Crescent Moon
Coffee.
years, beginning in the mid 80s as a student at UNL. He co-edited
the English Department's Laurus, the undergraduate annual
magazine with Season Harper. His poetry has appeared in
journals such as Plainsong, and the Plains Song Review, and the
online journal, The Middlewesterner. Lately, he has been working
on Poetry at the Moon, a weekly reading series at Crescent Moon
Coffee.
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