Metamorphosis

There are things I know...too many things...things I wish I didn't know. I know what it is like to be bullied, assaulted, symbolically emasculated. But I also know what it is like to hunt, to stalk, to kill. I know what it is to gut and skin stuff, to scale and filet stuff, and, in the case of the myriad catfish I have encountered, to do some combination of all of the above. I grew up the son of a hunter and fisherman, a raiser of hounds, and the best way to communicate with him and my brother was to learn their ways. I learned them as best I could.

Manhood was defined in very specific ways in their world...I tried to walk that path, with uneven success. My body has never quite been up to what my mind and their culture demanded of it, which explains why I chose not to serve in the military, and why I am less proficient at hunting, fishing, canoeing, etc., than some of you. I accept that. It is my genetic heritage, coupled with many injuries to shoulders and ankles and back, but it makes me no less a man. I eventually learned that.

What I've also had, all along, is an enormous intellect, a creative mind, filled with poetry and philosophy and art and music...a mind driven by intellectual curiosity...a mind at odds with the culture in which I was raised. I can and have planted and cultivated and grown and harvested my own crops. I've cleaned more than my share of fish. I've helped kill, skin, clean, and prep various critters, ranging from a gray squirrel to an Angus bull. And I write poetry, and my head is a juke box on continuous play, with everything from Vince Gill to Vivaldi randomly erupting.

Why do I say these things, tell this story? Because I grow weary of the "dividing lines" in America. I grow tired of the labeling and divisiveness. I grew up in a cold, drafty mill house on the cotton mill hill where my grandfather worked nearly his entire life. I lived in that world, though by freak opportunity my father, who didn't even graduate high school, was apart from it. We were lucky...his personality and skill landed him a job outside the mill hill world. But I also paid a price for that.

Ever had an older, stronger, meaner person steal your freaking Chuck Taylors out of your locker and wear them, just to taunt you? I have. Ever been mocked incessantly for using "big words?" I have, and much, much worse. It gets into your head...you think that you are forever doomed to be exploited, and so too often you play to the lowest common denominator rather than strive for personal excellence. But even when you do strive, when you think you've done everything the right way and well, sometimes you still lose. Ever lost a job to an inferior candidate because said candidate's father wanted said child to follow in his footsteps, regardless of qualifications? I have, and it gets into your head, as does getting "downsized" at a point in your career when you are finally beginning to think about the possibility that in 10-12 years, maybe you can think about retirement.

I've been asked to accept, bear, and/or do almost unspeakable things as part of generational or intellectual or psychological or academic hazing, and I have done so, including doing a few things of which I am ashamed. I have also seen death, up close and personal, though I'm sort of like Jack Sparrow when it comes to that subject. I've retrieved a still-born baby from the morgue, though my supervisors didn't bother to tell me the process, and delivered that "package," in a warm blanket the nurses provided, to the parents so they could say goodbye. And I've sat by the bedside of a dying patient, abiding with the family until, finally, that last, slow breath was drawn. I've sat up many a night with my own brother, fighting to stay awake so that I could be there if he woke up panicked. I've listened too many hours to his breathing, counting the time until he would wake and I could get some sleep, knowing we had made it through another night together, alive. I've stood by my fair share of graves, too. I continue to celebrate those who live on, as well as revere the departed.

I tell these stories because I have survived it all and worse, as many of you here know. I write because deep down, I know something you perhaps don't, and I want to share it with you. I know that I am worth the effort to stay alive. Took me a long time to get here, but I know this, and it is my anchor in the worst of storms. Want to swap stories? I'm here for you, anytime. Need to vent? I'm here. Seek me out. YOU are worth the effort to stay alive, too!

I find myself at yet another turning point in a life filled with them. Do I continue to play high school sports in spite of what happened to me as a sophomore, or do I disappear into the circle of nerds who are my closest friends? Do I drop out of Wake Forest in disgrace, or do I find a way to finish what my parents so want me to finish? Do I quit my job, or keep at it, even though one error in judgment almost cost the life of my best friend? Do I somehow find a way both to do my duty as a church deacon and to care for my badly wounded, flawed self? Do I drop out of seminary and go home because I know that church ministry is not my likely future, or do I finish what I started because the future is unclear? What on Earth do I do now that I know I am not meant to be a hospital chaplain?

The list goes on: Do I follow my passion for history into grad school, or do I try to find some "fit" where I can help support our personal economy? Do I carry on even when I lose one job to an arrogant search committee (AFTER I had defended my diss, they somehow refused to believe I was set to graduate, just because of a clerical delay in updating my transcript...yes, that happened, along with the apparent fact that I didn't bend over backward far enough to satisfy their egos...really? Yes. It happened.). And do I keep searching when another job, one for which I had been groomed for several years, is lost to overt nepotism? Do I carry on even when my seven years of devotion and service above and beyond the call go unrewarded and I am unceremoniously cut loose in the name of "strategic reorganization"?

The answer is yes. I have seen, felt, touched, tasted evil. This is not it. I may have been the victim of capitalism's impact on higher ed, the victim of short-sightedness, whatever...I'll leave that to others' judgments, but yes, victim I have been. Still, I know evil, have faced it down and made it back up before my fury. Whatever this is, it is not that. I will prevail...but I concede that mine is not the easy path. Thank you all so much for being here. For whatever reason or purpose, this is my path, and I walk it...it beats the alternative, every single day.

Some things fall in my lap, to be sure, but then others are taken away. It weighs on a person. One comes to fear good news or happy times, as the news or the times seem ever followed by bad and sorrowful. So it has been for The Bug and me since my triumphant awards tour in November and our wonderful anniversary cruise in December. Though many of you may not understand half of this, a few of you will understand all of it. I am here...I am alive...and I am strong, but I have the smell of smoke in my nose and the taste of ashes in my mouth. Forgive my anger...it is righteous, though too often misdirected. Forgive my instability...I am working on it. Accept my love and care....you have a formidable friend. But sometimes I just have to light a pire to what has been lost and, yes, howl at the moon.

Peace

Climbing Mount Pergatory

Graduation has come and gone, final grades are in, and I am embarking on my first true summer off in...forever, it seems. No classes to teach, no workshops to lead, no papers or lectures to present, we're not moving, and I don't have to learn to read German in 10 weeks! Also, no research grant requiring me to travel and then present my findings, etc., etc., etc. And so I have some time to work on me before I have to turn my attention toward the Fall teaching load, and I must say, I am a bit of a mess. I have been through phases in recent years of trying to identify and address issues, past and present, to, as it were, identify my demons and try to confront them. I must honestly report that, so far, the demons have kicked my ass!

 But then this week a long-time friend who, like me, is an INFP, raised a question, and the locks and chains  that have bound me to that way of thinking began to fall away. What if I told you, to paraphrase her, that your "inner demons" are not demons at all, not something to be fought and quashed, or to be defeated by and consumed, but rather more like children, begging to be understood and nurtured? What if the real demon is conformist thinking and the external pressures we feel to be the person, at least in appearance, "they" expect or demand? Reject that way of thinking! Accept who you are. That was the clarion call that made me stop in my tracks. In other words, as a wise young woman once said to her kid sister, "You be you, boo!" Or in the words of the Bard, "To thine own self be true." Words to live by, I say!

 As a society, there is no doubt that we have failed to understand this, and we need to stop failing! We need to stop hammering each other and ourselves into identities that are more shaped to be comfortable to others than to be the right fit for the one being hammered! I, for one, have suffered way too much along this line in the course of my life: the misunderstood, misfit child; not the little girl Daddy wanted, obviously, as I do identify as heterosexual male, but neither was I the mirror of my tough as nails father when he was a boy. The child with the high IQ in a culture that did not value intellectualism, the "hefty" lad who was slow and clumsy, the user of "big words" and the creative kid who often failed to do what was assigned because he was having too much fun in his imagination to be bothered with the mundane, that was me. As longtime readers here know, the result was years of bullying, culminating in the unimaginable final assault on my innocence in the year from hell that was 1975.

 What I haven't spoken as much about is the dark decade that followed, the nature and self-destructiveness of my lifestyle during much of that time. I finally broke out of that pattern of self-loathing and, indeed, de facto self-abuse, but the breakout sent me into the Pit of Despair. Happily, I was surrounded by a loving community, one of whom was to become my soulmate, and so in 1988 I began the long climb out of the pit and up Mount Purgatory. In the process, I completed my Master of Divinity degree, pivoted, after a year of intense soul-searching, to teaching as my vocation, earned NC certification, then immediately went on to earn a Master's degree in American history, and then admission to a Ph.D. program, where I thrived for the first couple of years.

 And then I fell into the Pit again, as events triggered all the demanding memories, some of which I had buried so deep as to be all but forgotten. Now I relived them in full color surround sound, because my brain is, well, special. So back on the meds I went, back to channeling the negative into positive. I took up painting when I couldn't write, not continually but as a way to express myself in a positive, pretty way. I painted landscapes, tobacco barns, dogs, horses, tractors, and then sand dunes, gulls, a lighthouse. These were things that made me smile, and they made my wife smile. And we wrote poetry again! And I finally finished that dissertation, and I got a full-time job in academia, and she advanced to a very comfortable position in her company. Life was okay, even as we faced the unthinkable with death of loved ones...life was okay.

But the realities of my new job, the challenges of working in such a financially troubled school, the coming and going of good friends, and the ever-present cost of loving each subsequent class of students, then having to let them go, began to take their toll. I drifted back into bad habits, even as I continued to be successful. I landed a book contract; I published a book chapter in an edited collection, and I wrote an award-winning article over the next few years. I won awards for best faculty and best club advisor, I earned tenure. And then the playhouse fell apart. I lost my book contract, as I had failed over and over again to meet deadlines. And the faculty finally received the news we had feared for awhile: we were bankrupt. My fifth year at this job was the year a part of me stopped caring. All the wind left my sails and I drifted badly toward the Pit. When another institution purchased us the next Spring, many thought it was our salvation, but it hasn't played that way. The uncertainty and angst is still there, along with the institutional dysfunction.

With aging families and seemingly a never-ending parade of deaths and funerals, life for us has been challenging. And with the new reality of my employment (at will status now, no tenure), where it seems like surface appearance takes precedence over depth of experience, and where we literally are in too precarious a position to give some students the grades they earned (the unspoken edict cloaked in the language of "retention"), it became too easy to let things go, to fake my way through teaching...and life. After all, any semester now they could (possibly will) calculate that they no longer need a full-time history professor, and that will be that. So I started to steal happiness, because I no longer felt happy, and when I couldn't steal it, I could drown out the pain. And so I got stuck in a deep, deep rut...not the Pit, at least not yet, but a helluva rut. We stole more than a bit of happiness on our wonderful 25th anniversary cruise, but by the time it was over, I was falling apart.

At some point this semester, with the grief accompanying the deaths of my Aunt Helen and Uncle Barry, word came to me concerning the personal struggles, based on a traumatic experience, of a student in one of my classes. I sought help from trusted colleagues in dealing with that revelation, including the anger I felt toward administrators for their inaction, and the anger I felt toward other students who were shaming and taunting the victim, or shunning her. I learned more stories...this was an institutional problem, and a dear one whom I know well and adore had suffered similar humiliation, shaming, victim-blaming, shunning, and even threats, when she had reported professional misconduct that needed reporting and investigating. The dam broke, and I cried me a river, let me tell you, projecting on those two young people all the feelings I had buried. I didn't just identify with them, I felt it all...everything I had "manned up" and swallowed, rather than face the shunning when, at age 16, I had been the victim.

I knew then that I had to act to take care of myself...I was in the Pit and it was worse than ever. It was swim or drown time. I chose to swim. I've been on maintenance meds for a long time, but I knew they were not nearly enough to cope with all this. So I acted on my instinct and long-time study of depression, and my doc backed me up, and the new regimen is helping. The river of tears has dried up, but the damage in the flood zone was formidable. I will be repairing bridges for awhile, but Spring has come, and with it promise of renewal.

The point is that I find myself once again wrestling with the great inner questions of who I am and how I can nurture and understand those inner voices that have become so demanding and petulant in recent years. There is the dead poet Lemuel Crouse, but who is he, really, and is "he" really a "he"? There is a strong feminine voice in some of Lemuel's work...I wish to explore this, as any artist should. And then there is the painter who for the last seven years has not dabbed oil to canvas. And there is the historian with a book people want that he can't seem to complete. And there's the guy with the ponytail and earring. What's that about? Is there a (modest, not really visible under most circumstances) tattoo in his future? And then there is the beloved teacher who can be so much better than he has been these past few years, despite the surface accolades.

It is an interesting time in my life. Most of the people who expected conformity from me are gone, so it is a bit easier for me to be myself, to find the masculine and feminine voices within, to let the introverted feeler feel, but to call on my shadow self, the entity I like to think of as an ISTJ female (perhaps naively believing that, somewhere in there, is a J, lol), to give structure and order to a professional life that has become far too chaotic. Mostly, one grows weary of always feeling as if happiness is something to be stolen, not lived. I intend to live! I will challenge people's comfort zones. I always have, but I will have better filters and, yes, a return to common sense and health. Wish me well! You know where to find me...

Elemental revisited

As I once again find myself in a time of emotional transition and soul-searching, I return to this outpouring of who I am. I was still in mourning for my mother when I wrote these. Death once again stalks our families. We've buried two of Mom's siblings since returning from our anniversary cruise. And I am face to face yet again with my old demons as my chronic depression has erupted into acute despair. Alack...the road goes ever on and on. And yet I walk it with my steadfast poet Lemuel Crouse. Who knows what next will erupt from my mind? I am curious to see for myself. In the meantime, my Elemental collection:

Child of Earth

From rock-ribbed, misty meadows

Where horned sheep safely grazed

While myriad solitary shepherd boys

Gazed heavenward and dreamt

Of a mythic distant land where each

Might claim a bit of his own ground

And work it by his leave, unfettered,

My forebears sallied forth in strength.

Not to Plymouth Rock or to Virginia,

But to Penn's luscious woodlands

And acres of soil so dark and fertile

One might well try to cook and eat it

Rather than bother planting crops.

Indeed, traditional grains thrived there,

But so, too, did old prejudices, pressures
And new, unsettling competitive stresses.

So my people took the Great Wagon Road

Up the storied Shenandoah Valley, onward

Through lofty gaps and carved gorges,

Turning down at length toward the knob

That still marks the way into Carolina,

And southwest to an open, rolling land

Described to them by other Deutsch men
Who had ventured to the Catawba River.

Along the South Fork, they farmed, milled,
Raised corn, fodder, hogs, sheep, cows,

Laying hens, turkeys, and draft horses, all

Tended by Lutheran sons and daughters.

Some took to working the supple clay,

Turning and burning mugs, jugs, crocks,

Thriving in the new world they made;

Few chose to roam further westward.

Yes, am I a child of the Piedmont,

With its clod-strewn plowed fields,

Lush pastures and cattle grazing

Their way through slow, lazy days

Of hazy, stifling humidity and flies.

My blood is the color of its clay,

My heart kneaded and shaped

And fired in a groundhog kiln.

But my soul longs for mountains,

For ancient, resting Grandfather

And Black Mitchell, the backbone;

For cloud-shrouded Clingman's Dome

And Mount Le Conte draped in snow;

For mighty Pisgah and blue ridges,

And our beloved Craggy Pinnacle,

Dressed in Catawba Rhododendron.

There I am at peace, high above

The crucible in which I must live,

Giving myself away, word by word,

Ever pining for Appalachian solace.

Child of Winds

In my age of innocence, I freely embraced

The trades, riding a soft, sweet westerly.

Lovingly caressed at first by my friend,

Pulled in by the promise of exotic shores,
Naive in the ways of winds and tide,
I was swept along, unaware of danger
Building behind me, swelling water spout,
I was unprepared when it went cyclonic.

Laid waste, I swallowing bitter dregs.

My bloodshot, tear-stained eyes left me

Blinded; that twister was but an outlier

Of a raging, pounding apocalyptic storm.

The fearsome wall hit me, shoveling all

Before it, plowing furrows across

The fragile farmland of my young heart,

Ripping holes in my woven cotton soul.

I saw the decimation, seeming random,

Slaughter of ships great and humble,

Shattered, hardwoods splintered,

Pine laid low, so many matchsticks

Scattered about in the tempest's fury.

I was carried up, up, and out, anon:

Spewed forth and falling, screaming,

Thinking wind itself to be my enemy.

I dared not dream as I plummeted

That I might survive, live to sail

Again, though not so carefree,

But here I am at the windlass...

My heart flies high on the foremast,

Double-sheet bend secure, exposed,

Slapped by every passing fancy,

Be it breeze, gust, gale, or typhoon.

Still, the knot holds, and I endure,

My colors showing honest agony,

Even as they are whipped to and fro,

Child no more, I fetch yonder horizon.

Child of Fire

Wrought as winter's bright embers

Still glowed warm in the fireplace,

Refined in a hot red-clay forge,

Hammered flat on the harsh anvil

That defined my teenage years

And tempered quick by tragedy,

I became hard, cold, with an edge,

But I still know what it is to burn.

I am known to boil over, bubbling

Like so much gurgling pastel mud

In perking Yellowstone paint pots.

I have shot steam-spray rockets

Skyward, a brash young geyser,

With irregular, happy abandon.

A simmering, stewing sot, I am,
Quick to erupt, absolutely deadly.

I have spat napalm, shat fire alive,

Pissed blazing kerosene streams
Upward in raging incendiary arcs

Onto unsuspecting heaps of tinder,

And I have felt scalding salt-tears

Scorch my sooty, puffy cheeks

As I wept over beloved bridges

I had wantonly sacked and ashed.

 I can be an inferno incarnate,

With tin dipper melting in hand,
Trying and failing ever to fetch

Just one healing, quenching sip

From the waiting, loving pool

Which longs to come to my aid
As my soul pops and crackles:

Son of flames, I am consumed.

Child of Waters

What magnetic moonlit tidal tug

Is it that pulls me off beam,

Sends me downstream, reeling,

Ever descending, rushing through

Rock-strewn, sand-barred creeks

Into gushing, swelling rivers...

Floating, fallen-timber rudderless,

Swept headlong to deeper waters?

Perhaps an accident of birth--

My winter-born sister Alaska

Speaks of liquid crystal, flowing:

Iron-brittle, creeping glaciers,

Gold-flecked beds, melt-floods,

Plowing, charging, galloping...

Fulminant meeting engagements

In resilient sounds and shallow seas.

Summer-born Hawaii whispers

Of fearsome typhoon and tidal wave,

Lead-white snow-capped peaks

And rain-drenched emerald slopes,

Vertigo-high waterfalls plunging,

Teeming pools and rivulets receiving...

Volcanoes and black sand beaches

Stranded by Everest-deep ocean.

I, too, am marked by waters,

Born a Scorpio, for good and ill,

Familiar with glittering frosty mornings,

Drifting snow, cumulonimbus towers,

Ear-splitting, rain-gorged supercells...

I have seen swirling, green-sky terror

And sat insomniac through hurricanes,

Two dark, one white, and grinned.

I am drawn, polarized, once again

To deep water, to saline amniotic fluid

From whence I came, a storm unnamed,

Tropical depression, seeking healing balm,

Calming, renewal of my formidable core

Until my own lion's roar again resounds,

Drowning out the screaming, searing,

Sticky cacophony that hounds me.

Damn the Nam

For my brothers and sisters...I may not have been in your jungle, but that doesn't mean I don't get it. Peace be with you, veterans...grace and peace be with us all.

Separate Lives

By Lemuel Crouse

You ponder entertainment news;

I study casualty lists…dead statistics.

You speculate about sports;

I rack ammo into clips for weapons

Stripped, cleaned, oiled…

Maybe now I can sleep tonight.

You are restive…some minutia

Floating on the edge of consciousness

While I ponder the relative ballistics

Of a thrown phone that seems filled

With foolish drivel, trivia from a world

Where squirrels steal untold snacks

From sparrows, and the stones and arrows

Never reach you in your cocoon.

But soon they will, and every hull

And shell will count…and all of them

Are chronicled in my warped brain…

The pain of my past demands it.

Shit…I would rather forget and drift

On the sea where Buckeyes and Ducks

Matter more than scattered seed,

And weed is a joke to be toked,

Not the strangling vine intertwined

With my spine, pulling me down

Into the void…Pink Floyd said it all.

1975

Late October, 1974, the recently opened West Lincoln Junior High hosted a football game. At that game were a number of high school students. Five of them, including four juniors from WLHS, never made it home...they were killed in a single-car accident. I was a 9th grader...one of the first class of 9th graders at WLJH. Though I did not know any of the students who were killed, many of my new classmates did, including one who was dating a boy that was killed. It was a time of great sadness, in the midst of a time of uneasy transition for all of us, adapting to this consolidated school, missing the comfort of the smaller elementary schools, sorting out new relationships and pecking orders.

Of course I was already sad. Adolescence was proving a real challenge for me, as I wasn't one of the dashing athletes, nor was I in band or choir or any other organization that gave me a peer group. I had been bullied quite a bit over the years, and now that bullying was taking on new aspects, coming as it was not just from older neighborhood toughs, but also from elitist boys and girls at this new school who made fun of me for sport. So I was struggling to find my place. I tried out for the basketball team, but I didn't make the cut. I lived too far away to make it to many of the school events, and so I wasn't part of the regular crowd in the stands. I had church responsibilities, even at that age, but I was struggling with that, too. Mama's good little boy was developing a dark side, one of which she definitely would not approve!

By late 1974, my grandfather had cancer and was in rapid decline. This was particularly hard on my father, given his strained relationship with his father and brother. Yeah, tell me about it, Pop. Anyway, Grandpaw Rhyne would die in early January, 1975, officially marking the beginning of the worst year of my life. I cannot tell you about all the things that happened to me. I am still trying to remember some of them, after trying for more than three decades to forget. I can tell you there was love and loss. I had to let go of my crush on Connie. I found a potential new crush with Kathy, even though I knew she was way outta my league. I was obsessed with the unattainable, rather than pondering the plausible, and so I missed chances.

There was another girl, sort of. We had PE together. She was not pretty, not clean, not healthy, but I liked her. She became my dance partner when our teacher introduced us to square dancing. I never hesitated to take her hand, and she liked me for that. I knew she was into drugs and more. I knew she lived in a very troubled home. I didn't care how she looked. She and I were partners, and so we learned to dance, together. There is no metaphor there, just the simple act of sharing a couple of hours a week in a gym full of kids that could be horribly hateful and cliquish. But in the spring of 1975, my dance partner, on a drug binge and feeling hopeless, put a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Football players were asked to be her pall bearers. Never mind that they would NEVER have taken her hand on the gym floor or anywhere else in public view. I chose to grieve in private.

I was SUCH a loner by the end of that school year. I had a new 10-speed, and so I took to the back roads of Lincoln County. That bike not only gave me freedom...it began to transform my body. I had grown taller than many of my classmates (hence my dream of playing basketball), but I needed to grow stronger, more agile to compete. I concluded that, since everyone in my frame of reference obviously loved football and football players, I would become one. Then maybe I would have a chance at making the JV basketball team. As a child, I had dreamed of being Bart Starr, but, alack, I had no arm. Now I would find my niche elsewhere...maybe as a guard or tackle. I made the team (they were desperate), but played the whole year as End, Guard, and Tackle (in other words, sitting on the end of the bench, guarding the water bucket, etc.). Still, I was a part of the team. I took the punishment, the hazing, the pain...I took it all, and my body grew stronger, more agile, to a degree, anyway.

As football season ended, my coaches encouraged me to play a winter sport. I suggested JV basketball...they suggested wrestling. I had two friends from church who wrestled, so this looked safe. They were seniors, one a heavyweight, the other somewhere in the 185-195 lb. classes, and neither were men with whom you wanted to tangle. Practice was a bit of a shock, as it was much more rigorous than football, but I was eager to learn, to please, to be a part of the team. But then things began to unravel. Many of the juniors and seniors resented our new coach. He was a poor replacement for the acclaimed coach who had left WLHS to go to a bigger school. Also, the injury bug took out one of my big friends (shoulder), and then the other (back), and the way the coach handled things led to both of them quitting the team. At the same time, my other grandfather, Preacher Friday, lost his long battle with heart and lung problems. He died right before Christmas.

I cannot explain to you just what my grandfathers meant to me. I was very close to them, closer in ways than I was to my own father. Losing them left a huge void in my life. In particular, losing her father was a severe blow to my already depressed mother. Things began to change for the worse at home, as well as at school. And there was another thing...a forbidden relationship, forbidden sexual exploration, forbidden fantasies. After all, I was Southern Baptist...pretty much EVERYTHING was forbidden. I had not only fantasied...a lot...about certain women at church, etc., but I had indulged in quite a bit of exploration with a childhood friend. It began innocently enough, but now, by age 16, we were no longer children, and I was deeply ashamed of the things we had done...sometimes continued to do when I was desperate and lonely enough.

I cannot remember when I tore the muscle in my back. I think it was over Christmas break, after I had returned to wrestling practice and been chewed out by the coach for missing several days. Nobody had told him about my grandfather. Apparently that was my job. Ugh. Anyway, I had driven my dad's truck, and I had given my teammate Steve a lift. I tore this muscle in practice and was in horrible pain, so of course the coach thought I was faking it. Steve had to drive the truck home, and then my mom took me to the emergency room. When the pain had eased enough, I returned to school...on crutches, dragging my legs along as best I could, as I still could not walk. Dear Kathy, the unattainable, was a saint, carrying my books for me, etc. She is married to a long-time friend of mine, btw...apparently she was attainable :-) She is still a saint.

I eventually recovered from my injury, and continued wrestling, but it was not fun. It was a matter of pride, stubbornness...I don't know what all. I suppose I was trying to prove that I had the right stuff. Again, I can't remember sequencing here. I have tried so very hard to move beyond that time in my life, and I have failed so very miserably. I am writing this in hopes of at least moving, even if it is side-ways. At some point, without the protection of my two big friends, I found myself under attack in the locker room shower. It was brutal, and I was defenseless against the two senior wrestlers who attacked me. This wasn't the usual hazing...I had passed that test during football season. This wasn't a prank, unlike the time a senior football player stole my shoes then wore them to school the next day, daring me to call him on it. This was assault, of the kind designed to strip me of what fledgling sense of manhood I had begun to form. This was the day a part of me died.

Someone heard/saw what was happening and went to get the coaches. The head football coach broke it up, only to humiliate me by asking, repeatedly, whether or not I minded what they were doing to me. Maybe he was trying to make me grow up...who knows? If I said "yes, I mind!" then he would have been forced to take action, and my high school life as I knew it would have been over. So I said nothing. From that day forward, there was no more hazing, no more assaults. Yes, there were rumors, snickers, stories spread over beer...stories that continued to resurface over the years. One of them had made me do this, someone said. One of them had done that to me, said another. I tried to forget, suppress, block, pretend it never happened.

I endured two more years of high school sports...more injuries, more disappointments, more frustration, all in the name of being part of the team. I gained a modicum of admiration from some coaches, some peers. I could have gotten a date with Connie, my former unrequited crush who was now a cheerleader. I never asked. I could have gotten dates with so many girls. I never asked. I couldn't risk letting anyone get close to me after that. I could not risk showing them what I saw when I looked in the mirror. I couldn't let them see the real me. And so I lived alone with my pain, internalized my anger, and sank into the darkness.

In that darkness, the poet Lemuel Crouse still dwells. I did not know it at the time, but he was born that day in that locker room. The thing I saw in the mirror, that wraith lurking in my bloodshot blue eyes, was him. Eventually, I would give him voice, and he would give me words. I have shared many of those words with you, here on this blog...sometimes at great risk and cost. Both of us have been at a loss for words for many months, for many reasons. I have been wallowing in the pit of despair, and he has been silent, biding his time. I am at my best when I walk in the light and let him walk his own path in the darkness. This is the balance I have lost, the balance I must now regain.

He will write again, as will I...just not right now. Right now, I have to mourn the passing of another student...a lovely girl who sat on the front row of one of my classes. She lost her life on a foggy night in a bad curve, and so we mourn her. But I live every day with PTSD, and so I also mourn a bit for me, as well...traumatic events force me to relive my own. Forgive me, Cady...I mean no disrespect. Godspeed to you, sweet soul. Rest in Peace.

Elemental

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison,

Study of Nest (1994)

Note: I have linked this to Magpie Tales, as my Child of Earth poem does connect with the notion of a nest/nesting. I took the liberty of putting all four of my "element" poems on this post, along with some of our photos to perhaps make 160 lines of poetry seem less pretentious. Really, I just wanted to share these with Mag followers, as you have meant so much to me. Hope you enjoy Child of Earth, and Winds, Fire, and Waters, if you haven't read them. I think it fair to say they do reflect a rather intense study of my nest! 

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Child of Earth

From rock-ribbed, misty meadows

Where horned sheep safely grazed

While myriad solitary shepherd boys

Gazed heavenward and dreamed

Of a mythic distant land where each

Might claim a bit of his own ground

And work it by his leave, unfettered,

My forebears sallied forth in strength.

Not to Plymouth Rock or to Virginia,

But to Penn's luscious woodlands

And acres of soil so dark and fertile

One might well try to cook and eat it

Rather than bother planting crops.

Indeed, traditional grains thrived there,

But so, too, did old prejudices, pressures
And new, unsettling competitive stresses.

So my people took the Great Wagon Road

Up the storied Shenandoah Valley, onward

Through lofty gaps and carved gorges,

Turning down at length toward the knob

That still marks the way into Carolina,

And southwest to an open, rolling land

Described to them by other Deutsch men
Who had ventured to the Catawba River.

Along the South Fork, they farmed, milled,
Raised corn, fodder, hogs, sheep, cows,

Laying hens, turkeys, and draft horses, all

Tended by Lutheran sons and daughters.

Some learned to work the supple clay,

Turning and burning mugs, jugs, crocks,

Thriving in the new world they made;

Few chose to roam further westward.

Yes, am I a child of the Piedmont,

With its clod-strewn plowed fields,

Lush pastures and cattle grazing

Their way through slow, lazy days

Of hazy, stifling humidity and flies.

My blood is the color of its clay,

My heart kneaded and shaped

And fired in a groundhog kiln.

But my soul longs for mountains,

For ancient, resting Grandfather

And Black Mitchell, the backbone;

For cloud-shrouded Clingman's Dome

And Mount Le Conte draped in snow;

For mighty Pisgah and blue ridges,

And our beloved Craggy Pinnacle,

Dressed in Catawba Rhododendron.

There I am at peace, high above

The crucible in which I must live,

Giving myself away, word by word,

Ever pining for Appalachian solace.

Child of Winds

In my age of innocence, I freely embraced

The trades, riding a soft, sweet westerly.

Lovingly caressed at first by my friend,

Pulled in by the promise of exotic shores,
Naive in the ways of winds and tide,
I was swept along, unaware of danger
Building behind me, swelling water spout,
I was unprepared when it went cyclonic.

Laid waste, I swallowing bitter dregs.

My bloodshot, tear-stained eyes left me

Blinded; that twister was but an outlier

Of a raging, pounding apocalyptic storm.

The fearsome wall hit me, shoveling all

Before it, plowing furrows across

The fragile farmland of my young heart,

Ripping holes in my woven cotton soul.

I saw the decimation, seeming random,

Slaughter of ships great and humble,

Shattered, hardwoods splintered,

Pine laid low, so many matchsticks

Scattered about in the tempest's fury.

I was carried up, up, and out, anon:

Spewed forth and falling, screaming,

Thinking wind itself to be my enemy.

I dared not dream as I plummeted

That I might survive, live to sail

Again, though not so carefree,

But here I am at the windlass...

My heart flies high on the foremast,

Double-sheet bend secure, exposed,

Slapped by every passing fancy,

Be it breeze, gust, gale, or typhoon.

Still, the knot holds, and I endure,

My colors showing honest agony,

Even as they are whipped to and fro,

Child no more, I fetch yonder horizon.

Child of Fire

Wrought as winter's bright embers

Still glowed warm in the fireplace,

Refined in a hot red-clay forge,

Hammered flat on the harsh anvil

That defined my teenage years

And tempered quick by tragedy,

I became hard, cold, with an edge,

But I still know what it is to burn.

I am known to boil over, bubbling

Like so much gurgling pastel mud

In perking Yellowstone paint pots.

I have shot steam-spray rockets

Skyward, a brash young geyser,

With irregular, happy abandon.

A simmering, stewing sot, I am,
Quick to erupt, absolutely deadly.

I have spat napalm, shat fire alive,

Pissed blazing kerosene streams
Upward in raging incendiary arcs

Onto unsuspecting heaps of tinder,

And I have felt scalding salt-tears

Scorch my sooty, puffy cheeks

As I wept over beloved bridges

I had wantonly sacked and ashed.

 I can be an inferno incarnate,

With tin dipper melting in hand,
Trying and failing ever to fetch

Just one healing, quenching sip

From the waiting, loving pool

Which longs to come to my aid
As my soul pops and crackles:

Son of flames, I am consumed.

Child of Waters

What magnetic moonlit tidal tug

Is it that pulls me off beam,

Sends me downstream, reeling,

Ever descending, rushing through

Rock-strewn, sand-barred creeks

Into gushing, swelling rivers...

Floating, fallen-timber rudderless,

Swept headlong to deeper waters?

Perhaps an accident of birth--

My winter-born sister Alaska

Speaks of liquid crystal, flowing:

Iron-brittle, creeping glaciers,

Gold-flecked beds, melt-floods,

Plowing, charging, galloping...

Fulminant meeting engagements

In resilient sounds and shallow seas.

Summer-born Hawaii whispers

Of fearsome typhoon and tidal wave,

Lead-white snow-capped peaks

And rain-drenched emerald slopes,

Vertigo-high waterfalls plunging,

Teeming pools and rivulets receiving...

Volcanoes and black sand beaches

Stranded by Everest-deep ocean.

I, too, am marked by waters,

Born a Scorpio, for good and ill,

Familiar with glittering frosty mornings,

Drifting snow, cumulonimbus towers,

Ear-splitting, rain-gorged supercells...

I have seen swirling, green-sky terror

And sat insomniac through hurricanes,

Two dark, one white, and grinned.

I am drawn, polarized, once again

To deep water, to saline amniotic fluid

From whence I came, a storm unnamed,

Tropical depression, seeking healing balm,

Calming, renewal of my formidable core

Until my own lion's roar again resounds,

Drowning out the screaming, searing,

Sticky cacophony that hounds me.