Shoals Suite
G.C. Waldrep
These poems are sited at Glendale Upper and Lower Shoals in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, on the Appalachian edge. They were written as part of Wofford College’s Long-Term Environmental Reflection initiative, sponsored by Wofford’s Goodall Environmental Studies Center.
GLENDALE UPPER SHOALS (I)
power upon power, layering upward
of stone, water, light, & air—
vinculum that, somehow, flows through—
the fluent knot—
here, I want absolutely nothing more
than what I already have—
this lamed intransigence, my body—
what can’t be participated in
has no hold on the stake
matter drives clean through the heart—
dark side of safety’s moon,
we can’t shift our fine instruments
to the riverside—
perfect figure for breath
as for the swift arrest of breath—
yours in the counter-abandonment—
in the slowest meter,
keyed to faith’s compression scar—
GLENDALE UPPER SHOALS (II)
proper relation
being
a preoccupation
of the naked
psyche—
proprioception—
are you,
literally, aware
of your body
in relation
to other bodies—
the slaked muse
bobbing
at the brink
of the new weir—
concatenation—
what music
can’t rouse, even
underheard—
the new plural—
in this case
of water & stone—
GLENDALE UPPER SHOALS (III)
in the Southwest, tinaja
is the word
for the chalice
to which the animals
come, to drink—
here, having forgotten
the slow diurnal
creep
of absence
by the water—
or, for the moment,
abundance—
we are not brought
together, in common
time—
not yet—
neither are we
allowed to cross
at this place anymore—
what does mercy
feel like, the old man
asked me,
he meant the texture—
he meant muslin,
marble,
anything towards
which the eye reaches—
he did not mean,
put your finger
in the water, come &
cool my tongue—
complete
is an adverb, here—
is what I told him—
shadows climbing
into the uneven aptitude
for dusk—
the sometimes
transverse flow—
in the dynamited
channel—five syllables—
GLENDALE UPPER SHOALS (IV)
tune, tune, wherever can that word have served
its apprenticeship—
for surely tune was an orphan—
making its way, at one time, in a hostile world—
(& now, we walk through tune’s palace, richly
appointed—
the docents
deliver their memor-
ized homilies, we duly take our photographs)—
GLENDALE UPPER SHOALS (V)
do you have everything
you need, the docent
asked, raising the plank
that led me out onto
the island—
yes, I said,
because I had no
other option—
I let the sun
lecture my cells,
the emblems sharpening
around which the mind
organizes experience—
what we call experience—
I took notes—
which, as I
understand, the docent
will carefully
if regretfully relieve
me of, upon my return—
GLENDALE UPPER SHOALS (VI/VII)
(1)
perpetual state of waking, of acknowledgment—
to which the cells object—
they file their petitions, they rally the organs
of the body—
march them in circles, placards reading NOW—
(2)
never to forget the feeling of scoured granite
beneath my fingertips, my scraped palms—
why has music never touched me in this way—
salience, the carved toil of winter yielding—
a minute—
an hour—what the butcher spares the throne—
GLENDALE SHOALS (IV)
the bared plenitude,
radiation’s
haptic pressure—
bacteria’s sheer
drop, pellucid,
ledge of the body
cantilevered—
so-and-so died
seized, in the old
parlance,
of this or that—
the estate’s blind
transfiguration—
the laid wefts
poised
as song is poised,
sedimentary song—
the brazier
kept topped off
with coals, certainly
I produce both
heat & light—
certainly
I am enchanted
with disparities—
the club moss,
say—the comet’s
insistent tap
at my shoulder—
my friend
hauls his friend
up from the
occluded cistern—
I agree, it’s a topo-
logical miracle—
the downward-
pointing branch
from which
a deer tick
suspends itself—
& its knowledge
of you, something
like you—
the god
in the foreground—
bare synthesis
refulgent
in hemoglobin—
what’s not to like—
or point a gun
at, I heard
one fisherman
jest, to another—
casting &
recasting
into the effluent—
GLENDALE SHOALS (V)
open-cast organism—
the engrossing
bits set off, for now,
as sermons
rust acknowledges—
Sorry about that,
love, said the girl
whose puppy
had leapt joyfully
towards me—
the clarifying
essence, not a motif—
the grandeur
of its etymology
best viewed
from the aggregate—
the native cane
poised as if to dive—
broad awareness
is the gift
of settled minds,
wrote Ammons—
the invitation—
to depth’s variance—
is plenary, though
also etched
in the tissues—
in gilt script—
another,
briefer thing
(Ammons again)—
intimacy, &
intimacy’s precise
disposition—
the hogweed’s
venal appetite—
to root & flare
but mostly, to flare—
G.C. Waldrep’s most recent books are The Earliest Witnesses (Tupelo/Carcanet, 2021) and feast gently (Tupelo, 2018), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. Recent work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Paris Review, New England Review, Yale Review, Colorado Review, The Nation, New American Writing, Conjunctions, and other journals. Waldrep lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he teaches at Bucknell University.