Appalachia 1976, and: By Definition

TWO POEMS by Betty Payne James Appalachia 1976 My sister motors through Europe in a Mercedes-Benz. Disembarking in New York, she calls long-distance And speaks to me of her homesickness, her longing to come home after all these years. She says that she has seen rosy-cheeked children in Germany who remind her of her childhood. When I ask if she can make the detour of perhaps two hours Along the return drive to Dallas to see the land and home and valley once again, She says actually there is no time for detours on their journey. I understand what she is saying. My brother seldom comes home. A psychologist in Ohio, he wears silken shirts and handstitched leather trousers. If I tell him that the roof leaks on our father's house, He races the engine of his sports car and stares at me. "Bad karma," he tells me. "Why are you bringing me down? Plant trees everywhere. Trees are life," he says. I kneel on rough concrete in the pump house To repair the pump that brings water from this earth to give us life. There are fences to mend. Always fences to mend. The creek banks fall, and the fields give way. The blackberry bushes move down from the hillsides, And the shining sumac engulfs the edges of old meadows. Against the limits of broken fences, Young poplars lift fragile green stronger than time. The honeysuckle litters its persistent endurance, And I say, "Oh well, endure then, friend, For little else endures." In this antique realm, Valley and creek and trees and solace within the enclosure of a sure place, The hills lift to moonlight. The planting of trees has nothing to do with the karma of this land. 33 The new trees will sprout despite our harm. The roofs will leak, and there will always be fences to mend, And denial coming in easy answers. I do not think the children have ever been rosy-cheeked in Appalachia. But the roads always lead somehow to home, no matter where you start, If home is really where you want to return. The land sings beneath my feet whenever I walk upon it. By Definition I knew somebody once Asked how you could tell a man was an Appalachian. I didn't give them that old routine about long-headed, high-shouldered people Or the business about mistrust of strangers And tilted houses stuck back in hollows. None of that signifies anyway. I know a sign that never fails. An Appalachian is a man who can take a good car, Used maybe, but serviceable, And run it hard as hell over rough roads And let it go all to pieces inside In a litter of thrown beer cans, cigarette butts, Old junk yard receipts for used car parts, Distributor caps, generator brushes, Ripped wads of plastic upholstery, Baby sweaters and hound hairs and dust. If he washes the outside now and then, You suspect it's only because he's courting another woman. Sometimes he'll wax part of it, Two fenders, the hood, part of the trunk Until the sun gets too hot and the beer gets too heavy in his mind. When it's done and all used up inside, He parks it somewhere at the edge of the yard And walks away from it. Most times, He treats his woman that way too. 34 ...