Blood Trail Excerpts @ Insynthesis.com

Excerpts from BLOOD TRAIL
by Florence McGinn

On Writing

It is the truth certainly entirely true
but I do not swear that the words
the beloved words
the cutting words
all these words which are my words
have any reality perhaps no reality at all
in poetry
as in telling the truth
or in devising lies
when the words are free having been carried
long enough on sagging shoulders
given away thrust forth
they abandon the pen learn to teach themselves
gather into themselves
their own lives untouchable
much like a freshly remote yesterday
and more like a strangely familiar tomorrow

Speaking the Language

For a long time,
my Cantonese family
was the only Chinese family in town.
I spoke English well,
but my tiny Asian face stopped conversations.
Adults encountered would say single words
and mime simple actions
like smiling, gesticulating actors
in a silent street show. I would watch,
and I would not speak. Jostling currents of adults
would move around me,
touching me softly
as the stream flows past
young cattails willing to bend.
I saw others, my age, shriek and object,
impinge and demand incessantly
as the nestling calls to its vagrant parents.
I did not know their tricks.
I kept a shy, intent vigil to gain their knowledge.
Watching in silence became an accustomed joy.When I entered kindergarten,
the teacher called my mother.
I did not know she had come to school
during the quiet walk to the principal's office,
holding my teacher's unresponsive hand.
I listened. My problem
was carefully explained.
"We are not sure what to do
because your daughter cannot
speak English."

My mother's eyes, the color of brown silt
in a still pond, looked long at me.
She asked the anxious administrator
how they knew I could not speak their language.

"She watches everything attentively,
but she has not spoken one word
all week."

My eyes
as surely as a frightened, shrieked
protest exploding in the air
told my mother
they had not asked me.

My mother turned
to the waiting officials.
She spoke low in soft apology.
I hung my head as she said
I spoke a little English.
I wanted to flutter forward
to speak English in the fluency I used
with comfortable ease at home,
but her bowed head stopped me.
My mother indicated the family's mistake;
we would speak only English at home now,
so the children would learn
and speak with no accent.
The children would not have her accent,
and I, the oldest, would learn quickly.
They would be surprised at the pace
of my learning in such a good school.
She promised that.

I stand in front of my own English classroom now.
Faces turn toward me in eagerness
as I read favorite, brimming lines
from Merwin, Yeats, Kinnell.
My English is clear and precise, unaccented.

Yet, there are long, desert dry moments
when my tongue stalls and aches
for the graceful rise and fall,
the drawn out vowels,
of my childhood chatter,
my forgotten, family language.

All Mothers

Pulling the weeds near the spiky,
spreading vines of green tomato,
I move the thick stems and see
a grass-lined hollow, a soft nest
filled with brown, speckled eggs.
I look beyond the bristling zucchini plants
and through the staked snap peas to see
the fluttering wings of a mother quail.

I think of the nine months that you spent
fluttering and growing beneath my heart.
I remember the heavy weight of your coming
and the umbilical cord's sweet cutting,
never severing your link to my heart's blood.

I rise, knowing that in this year's garden,
there will be a wild place near unpicked tomatoes
where the weeds will grow thick and tall.

Spring Planting with My Daughter

It nestled firmly in your hand
as I brushed aside dry, oak leaves.
Humus was soft and moist,
but the trowel shivered harshly in my hand.

The rock was blue black in its heaviness;
no roots would ever pierce its unyielding bulk.
My searching trowel confirmed its unmoving presence.

I began to push the damp dirt
back into that difficult hole,
but I saw your small fingers
tighten around the swelling daffodil bulb.
I heard myself say that spring
would bring yellow petals of sunlight
to greet you in the early morning.

Spring yellow to make you smile
as you watched the flashing lights
of the school bus stop.

I took off my dirt-stiff canvas gloves
and began to feel for the edges of the rock
with my groping fingertips.

Holding the Words

Old dreams return at odd moments
to flicker during sunlit hours
like finding a pearl button
in a lint-filled pocket.

An elevator door slides open,
and for a lingering moment
night shapes shimmer.

Words can do that.
White wine swirls
to remembered cadences

of the heart, flapping,
clothes-pinned on the line
and hung out to dry.

An aspen tree shivers
against a purple sky.
Ragged voices rage,

making ear drums quiver
with the rasped sound
of lung-wracked, disbelieving sobs.

And out of the darkness
(and would it be the same if it were light?),
come the words, like bits of broken glass,

bringing reflection's aching union
to unfinished images' tight embrace.

Sharing the Words
published in POET'S PEN, 1994

The bent heads of other people's children
are bowed over open books.
In the classroom, a palpable, breathing quiet
hovers like the private softness
of my own child's bedtime moments.

A chuckle touches the edge of silence,
but the written page continues
to hold back restlessness.

A single bee buzzes
through an open window,
and I chase it out.

A questioning head rises,
and we bend together whispering
about characters and motives.

Others join us,
and excitement rises
with talk of plot expectations.

A hush falls
as I read a poem
to fuel their thoughts.

Within this circle of time and words,
these beautiful children
are mine.