As Told by the Wind to Loblolly Woman

Angie Dribben

 

How we came to tell the stories we call truth—as told by the Wind to Loblolly woman.

 

///

 

Heat-season ran long. Still. Heavy this year. Holding down even Wind. Until one day. Loblolly woman cries. Down by the bend of the creek where the minnows grow big enough to eat and the log used to cross is rotting. Leaves fall heavy as golden rain. In their cascade lilts Wind’s familiar voice. Because Wind can go anywhere, She knows and howls,

 

All over the sky is blue for the same gases and particles, but none is the blues of home.

 

///

 

You’ll remember summer’s lesson by the sight

of Spotted Touch-Me-Not also called as

Kicking Colt, Jewell Weed, lining the path

to the creek where the people of the Minnows live.

People of medicine.

 

It is called spotted because each flower hangs

like an open opulent orange mouth, 

tangerine tongue draping over its lips.

The whole of it painted with red spots.

Leaves appear silver or jeweled when held underwater.

 

When seed pods are mature the lightest touch causes them to expel their seeds.

Dehiscence—the splitting or bursting open of a pod or wound.

 

///

 

Sometimes the lightest touch is love.

Sometimes it must be split open.

 

///

 

Within the Loblollys there is always sadness.

 

///

 

As She caves in the barn roof, Wind blusters,

 

I watch your loss. This, the wound of the Loblollys.

One generation to the next. Someone must pay for what the ones before take.

 

I can tell you the birth of your sadness

 

///

 

Fingers flung, palms given

up to night’s radiant rafters 

 

and let gods

 

of the Sweet Gum

and Women of the Melon

and Creek Waters and Her Minnows

and Fish Wood

and Sea Beneath the Earth and

 

 

 

quiver              with need

to writhe          in shadows.                 Recall

time     of field and sheep.       Laughter.

Pitchforks raised         in joy  in sustenance  not labor.

Evening’s dancers don masks of Red Wolf and Fox.             Not masks at all.

Not hunted at all.        Land bleeding into our clothes.

Pokeberry. Walnut husks. Dandelions—

            for whimsy, for tea, for tincture, for nine shades of yellow: root to ray floret.

 

Remember medicine resides inside

open palms. Touch pulls the pain.

 

Your people stole                    this

from your people.                   

 

Tied your mother’s father’s father’s father’s fingers to spinning wheels.

Tethered the women indoors until they forgot they can leave.

 

Remember the shadow sheen.

Disinter Spirit from your own indurate bones.       

 

///

 

Your people learned to plant rather than grow. This requires harvest, leaves cutover. You must see all the cutover creates— a horizon opened like arms to god ready for the blessings of the rising sun.

 

Sunrise like rainbows on their way. Be awed by the way dew and the cold winter nights

spit diamonds across the cutover. Be in awe of this. Beware of what this has given you.

 

Rush. Collect the dead. Walk out among the graveyard of everything. Killed because it dared to keep alive. Drop to your knees. Do not flinch. As the crusted stalks of grass slice through your thin skin. Sit among the death you are responsible for because you are born into it.

 

///

 

Ask how to make it better and I will tell you

I don’t believe you

You only want to feel better

Make it better, live better

Your privilege is your strength, therefore your duty

Use it to make safety

For coyotes to come out in the day

 

///

 

Loblolly your forest is small and very tight

only the ones on the perimeter can see out but mostly they are looking back in

 

You have the privilege of view

You must look

 

///

 

 

I am of none of you but known by all of you. I am within all of you. All people are our people.

 

///

 

 

***

Angie Dribben’s debut collection, Everygirl, a finalist for the 2020 Dogfish Head Prize, is out with Main Street Rag in May 2021. She is Contributing Review Editor at Cider Press Review. Her poetry, essays, mixed media, and reviews can be found or are forthcoming in Cave Wall, EcoTheo, Deep South, San Pedro River Review, Crab Creek Review, Crack the Spine, fatal flaw, up the staircase quarterly, patchwork lit, and others. Her poetry is selected for anthologies: Aunt Flo, I Wanna Be Loved By You (Marilyn Monroe Poems), and Texas Review Press’ Virginia anthology.