On Birds, and: Elegy as a Railroad Watch, and: Axis Mundi

Abstract

On Birds, and: Elegy as a Railroad Watch, and: Axis Mundi Jae Dyche (bio) ON BIRDS Appearing in the blush threads of morningor deep in the indigo hours, alone,or gaggled in the damp ryegrass— sometimes humming amongthe thrashed wheat, a few chestnut-banded, others with naked vermillion heads,the impossibility of their bodiescarried on graceless primitive legs. Below the sugar maples, robins.Descendants of one who'd pluckeda thorn from the temple of the dying Christ, while sparrows scuttled and whistledat the feet of Romans and the unbaptized. What of starlings, the interminablepitchy chorus? Souls of suicides perhapsas they purr and rattle low in the cedars, I think, in purgatory there are only black birds,their stygian wings pressing intothe backs of the penitent. In Heaven, peacocks.Resplendent and, according to the Greeks,incapable of decay. [End Page 96] Unlike Levis's wren in the gravelflushed with lice and emptiness— In truth there is no parable,even in the instant when hundreds of ordinarysmall birds thrust their wings against the air and the whole history of empire-building,high rhetoric, scientific inventiongives way in the fervor of their strokes. This is what is meant by divine. This,and the little blood-fat mites riddlingthe feathers, each a kind of god, carried on the headof a white-breasted nuthatchskittering across the limbs of apple trees. [End Page 97] ELEGY AS A RAILROAD WATCH The watch—gifted to my grandfather(or great-grandfather?) from the B&O Rail Company, token for his service; the hours, I'm told,spent between his fiddle and whiskey— its black hands resting at exaggerated numerals,5:56 and thirty seconds; have for some time, though I couldn't say for how long;or his name; or the angle of his jaw, the lines beneath his eyes; whether his stubble glintedthe same auburn as my father's— all I know is he was a railroader,of the many chafed and bent; hammering spikes into Appalachian bedrock—and Appalachia is unforgiving place. Yet someone had to lay the rails;hitch America with pins and girders, corroded relics of industry and the engine; of the new world.When father's people settled here, the mountains were frontier or Allegheny—or fine river; before the Potomac flushed with rust [End Page 98] left by generations of freight cars ferrying coalfrom our hills to Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago; to power another man's machines,soot etched to the row homes and fellowship halls staggering towards the Potomac's metallic depths:Piedmont, Cumberland, Martinsburg, cracked mortar and ocher ghosts.Nonetheless, except a finger-worn crescent on the back, the watch is polished; keptin a silk pocket envelope in father's bureau; in mine now:and I don't want it to be there— what do I know of granite and iron-straps, or scabs;of a day's hard labor, the weight of the sledge; the dialects of oak and creosote.Of 5:56 and thirty seconds. Of the steady outlying host of whistles; smut collecting in the brick,around puddles and porch steps, my father's tennis shoes wet and loose. What do I knowof Salvation Army clothing; of to provide for. [End Page 99] Of his blotched shoulders; or brow against a windowof the coach car, morning fog gathering, unspent seconds on the glass.What could I know of the sage cotton curtain drawn across the hospital room;of the whole of a man's parts set onto legal paper and notarized:bone and blood; ore and hot slag, the space of the train car benchbetween father and daughter; Mid-Western bethels of steel and exhaust;my father lost in the syllables of great named trains: Empire Builder, City of New Orleans,California Zephyr, syllables trembling and lurching forward beyond abeyance;beyond the Allegheny Front and Cumberland Valley; further than Pittsburg smokestacks and Ohio River;into the open expanse of memory. [End Page 100] AXIS MUNDI At the center of gravity's pullis a kitchen table, chipped laminate at the corners, dusted in whole-meal flour,skitters of biscuit...