Jackson Wheeler
THE CALF
All neck
All tongue
All bulging eyes and moist nose
My Uncle Joe, being more practical
Calls it a little beeve (knowing for sure
The purpose of this calf)
Cousin Rickie and I are ordered
To keep it out of the milking stall
As my uncle squats near Maisie’s
Ballooning udder washing her teats.
At evening milking
We could have been, comically, one animal
Fabled, with eight legs, four arms, six eyes
And milky breath – thumping about in the barn
Bawling and grunting.
The calf so determined we think to call it Sherman
For the General who didn’t give up till he scorched
His way to the sea - not wanting to give
It the name of someone we liked.
But this was all long ago,
We were boys; it was veal
For the market – though we saw in its determination
Something to like. We named it Stonewall instead,
For Jackson, the general who
Had a run of bad luck; shot by his own men,
whose dying words were:
“Gentleman, let us cross over the river
and rest underneath the trees”
At a signal from my uncle
We released little Stonewall
Burdened with tragedy,
Like its namesake,
To suckle in the dusky air.
PHOTOGRAPH: A POEM WRITTEN FOR MY MOTHER ON A LINE
FROM DICKINSON
The autumn sky is wide and pale.
You stand in your winter garden with hoe
in hand, among turnips, collards, kale.
You turn from the camera I hold
toward your house’s shadow. Its dark margin
crops this photo’s bright afternoon. I am told
you find work to do that fills each day.
My snapshot grants us pardon, the captive
moment, in which we linger, but will not stay.
The days grow short, mountain air turns cold.
We'll soon know all there is to know of Heaven.
Jackson Wheeler is a social worker living in Oxnard, CA. A native of Andrews, NC in the Smoky Mountains, he is the author of two collections, Swimming Past Iceland (Mille Grazie Press, 1993) and with Glenna Luschei and David Oliveira, A Near Country: Poems of Loss (Solo Press, 1999). Having just stepped down as editor of SOLO: A Journal of Poetry, he is guest co-editing an American issue of the British journal, AGENDA as well as consulting on a Southern Appalachian issue of the journal Rivendell. He has work forthcoming in Praire Schooner, Rivendell, and an anthology from the Univ. of Iowa, A Fine Frenzy: Contemporary Poets Respond to Shakespeare.
