Among the Shadows

Shades

When Odysseus descended to the underworldand crossed the dark river to learn the keyto his destiny, he poured the ritual milk and honey,the wine and barley and blood to summon the dead,but he never expected to find his mother amongthe shadows who were filled with mist and siftedwith the wind which had no source. He had thoughther alive and back in Ithaca expecting his return.He had assumed the worst ordeals were his own.But, when he reached out, shivering as he wept,to embrace the ghost, that wanderer foundno substance, no flesh nor blood nor bone,and he must have felt as I did that first time homewhen my mother's mind had begun to wanderand she disremembered not only the laughter,the lightning-struck chinaberry, the sunsetpeaches and fireflies and the sharp smellof catfish frying, but also her name and the factthat she was sitting in her kitchen of fifty yearsbeside my father who stood there strainingnot to wring his hands or surrender to the tearswelling around his eyes. She gathered her purse,her hat and wrap, then said, Please drive me homebefore strangers take every damned thing I own.Her eyes glaucous with terror, she was exhaustedand desperate, almost herself, "an empty, flittingshade," as Homer says it, uncertain in her hazewhether she was moving toward or awayfrom what might be called the Great Dream.When she sobbed and cried, Where is my son?,I, too, felt bewildered, and not even a seer from the land of night and frost and smokecould tell me what words would amountto comfort, nor which constellation to steer by,nor where all this heart-sorrow might end.

Redbird

First time we traipsed beyond Black Lake,Nance said the cardinal she called ruddockwas bashful, an ember amid the cedars,a messenger quick as a hornet, so smartnot even the hungry hawk's eye could trackhis madcap path. "Don't trust his cheerand purty," she warned me. "To somehe's named bloodbird and brings omensof suffering to come." I uttered the cluckof his syllables: ruddock. It was tartas an Indian turnip's root. The starkwoods were just thawing, hardwood trunksdark against evergreens, and we saw onerushing through the sparse thicket's ice,his mask mysterious, a seed in his beak,eyes invisible, his scarlet crest sharp.

"You mark me, them feathers has beendipped in some poor fellow's bleeding.It posulutely chills my heart to spy one,but ain't he a beauty?" The evening startrembled over the bare trees. Next springNance herself was broken and unstrung,the cough sapping all her piss and vinegar.Before summer was over she was gone.

Now, when one darts by, I think of Nancewinking, waving her sourwood stick,winging randomly from notion to notion, drawling the world to homespun sense.I picture her ruddy face grinning and speakthe name for that thrum on the tongue:ruddock, firebird, that startle and spark.Sinister or not, it yearns to be sung.