Tether
We had our instructions:
make for the basement.
So we played games with our hands,
like summer camp, only, tile halls
sang each hand slap back.
Teacher’s sole was rain on a window and
we pretended to see the crooked cloudfinger reaching
down, out of the clouds,
out —
a ghost in search of a body.
The tetherball taut, 90 degrees,
life-sized Ouija, pointing out the obvious
oblivious, we once hit that ball so
hard it became an asteroid smack
into the back of Mister _____
then we double-knotted it, sure
to withstand the kids, sure
to withstand the winds. But
what of the slide,
the highest point on the plains,
or, our butterfly bush,
that reclamation!
Imagine being there, a blur
in a storm and into that fragrant cloud
of milkweed wafted by this
wicked wind, this
monarch whirl, this
papery visage.
Based on the fragments that have emerged the last few times I’ve sat down to write, the poems for the next few weeks will be in conversation with growing up near the plains and, in particular, in conversation with the western part of Kansas. Echoing past poems: it is strange to call a place home but not know it well. Many of my experiences of the most Kansas-esque Kansas are second-hand accounts rather than personal memories. This poem is true in the same way that memory is true — in the way that poring over a photograph makes you feel like you were there. That said, the tetherball stuff is true. Every last bit of it.
I think these fragments have been coming from a few different inspirations:
I’ve been reading Prairyerth: A Deep Map by William Least Heat-Moon which is a beautiful meditation on Chase County, Kansas and the prairie writ large.
Similarly, a recent episode of Poetry Unbound featured a poem called Our Bird Aegis by Ray Young Bear, which also roots itself staunchly in the tall grass.
Also, I’ve stumbled into reading Ghost Of and The Ghosts of Birds at the same time which likely informed the ghost line.
Also just finished The Color of Law which talks about Kansas and land in a very different but equally illuminating way.
I’ve been thinking about putting a tetherball on the deck (roof) of our townhouse — me against the sky. Open to pushback.
With Gratitude,
Definitely relate to the feeling that Kansas was experienced secondhand. There’s not much prairie in PV. I feel I have very little connection to the plains. My memories of traveling through middle/western Kansas feel hot and treeless, which often made me claustrophobic. Going to school in the middle of Kansas didn’t help me connect to the essence of it.
That said, I will romanticize the idea of the plains, and I sincerely wish I had a different relationship. Will definitely peep some of the literary ‘ces here.