Black Creek, Mississippi
- Black Creek, Mississippi
Back home there’s a Black Creekthat flows northeast to the Hudson—small stream where herring runin the spring and people dip netsto haul them in. And recentlyin a whole other part of the countytwo signs have cropped upalong a road that crosses between two cornfieldsannouncing another Black Creek,though there’s no stream there, not evena sign of a gully, and all I can think isthat once long ago a stream flowed therethat was diverted and someone has petitionedthe county to memorialize it with signs.Two signs along a road in the middleof fields, one facing traffic going north,the other facing traffic going south, signsbound to confuse more than just me. And nowwhat I wonder as we cross a small streamon Route 59 in Mississippi called Black Creekis whether somewhere there’s a Black Creeknamed when first seen because the water wasdarkened by an upstream fall of nuts whose huskswould stain. I picture it as a stream whose wateris clear but dark, like tea steeped a very long time.Black Creek in Mississippi might besuch a stream. Or the one back homein New York that flows to the Hudson. All I’ve seenof either is a flash of water shaded by treesas I quickly drove past, and the signs, like thosein the field, announcing that this, this is Black Creek. [End Page 138]
Matthew J. Spireng’s book, What Focus Is, was published in 2011 by Word Press. His book Out of Body won the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award and was published in 2006 by Bluestem Press at Emporia State University. His chapbooks are: Clear Cut, a signed and numbered limited edition of his poems with photographs by Austin Stracke on which the poems are based; Young Farmer; Encounters; Inspiration Point, winner of the 2000 Bright Hill Press Poetry Chapbook Competition; and Just This. Since 1990, his poems have appeared in journals including North American Review, Tar River Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, Louisiana Literature, English Journal, and Connecticut Review.
