Summer 2014: Poetry
Thicker Than Water
by Claudia F. Savage
He is not even here, but the dinner conversation is going badly, the guests are talking about some perceived evil: oil and gas drilling, ranching, or pork in such a way that the tone slants toward that place where country people are only huddling, dull-eyed sheep bleating for Jesus. The guest who swirls her Cabernet is delicate in candlelight. The guest who shivers, doubting the fact that I can shoot, compliments my green beans. They are forking in the roasted potato, the room. I want to show the guy my left hook instead of the apple tart. This I can stop. Loving him muddied a line inside me. I want to tell them, there is a woman in a wheelchair echoing the blue hills’ rain whether or not I am there to listen. There is a cabin above the plum orchard that you must stoop to enter. For 130 years its planks let the world in. At dusk a bluebird’s call can carry through the blackberry to greet the twilight. There is his grandfather trying to save that man falling into the cement pit, thick dust blinding. There is his father pushing brooms through the high school halls to fill his belly. There is him, hiking into the mountains in three feet of snow, gusts urging it below 20, for so many hours that his fingers lose their sense of touch and never regain it. And how he didn’t complain as I wrapped blanket after blanket around him, the skin on his knuckles elephantine, cheeks furious with wind. I want to tell them, no hillside will ever sigh at your return. No pine sweeten. His people never trusted me, and now, have even less reason to, still, he made his history mine. He said this mountain will turn your legs to ghosts. These vines are good for thickening. He lengthened his vowels in the curve of my ear till they nested, sun-filled snakes. Without him, I fear the clay rivers will not recognize me. I fear there will be no welcoming hillside, no leaf-tinged light. I fear I will be stuck hearing Northeasterners chew their fattened beef at my table forever.
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