A Visit to the Boy Farm

This post is a response to “Back to the Land,” an article which appeared in Orion Magazine https://orionmagazine.org/article/bac... 


Chelsea Bandalillo takes the readers on a brief tour of the Texas State Forensic Anthropology Research Facility where forensic anthropologists research the decomposition process of cadavers, hoping to learn gems of information which will help them investigate crime scenes. Though I cannot place a specific reason for the thought, I got the impression that she was uncomfortable with the subject matter. Despite the assertion that she tries but cannot see the remains as human, she tours the facility with “eyes open and mouth mostly closed.” 


The short form, in our time challenged, compressed world gives readers a snap shot view. Perhaps she chose the short form for that reason, or perhaps she senses potential discomfort for readers and chose the short form so that they will read through the text without putting it down. 


The subject matter provides rich ground for a more in-depth treatment. Though I have not toured the Texas facility or the similar one operated by the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, I have taken the virtual tour of the Knoxville facility http://www.jeffersonbass.com/tour-the... . Dr. William Bass oversees the Knoxville “body farm” and teamed up with writer Jon Jefferson to produce ten volumes of mysteries known as the “Body Farm Series” under the pen name Jefferson Bass. 


Fans of the Jefferson Bass series or the successful television series, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, with its multiple spin-offs, would probably enjoy Bandilillo’s article more than literary readers. They might even read a more in-depth article. Though Bandiillo cannot bring herself to say the word cadaver in reference to the bodies which attract them, the paragraph on butterflies at the end is a nice touch. I would enjoy seeing the butterflies. 

Written as an assignment for an online course on writing nonfiction.

Glen Falls

A backlit tree delights the eye, but one fall leaf in gold or red, translucent with the sun from an angle behind, makes a striking photograph. Light passes through the leaf as it passes through a cellophane wrapper. The forest floor has become a carpet of gold, red and brown as Glen Falls murmurs in the distance. Today, it is strange to think that I wrote the poem, “Glen Falls Trail,” which cemented the persona of nature poet for me, near the diminutive water fall from which I drew the title. That was nearly twelve years ago, in 2007.

I call Glen Falls diminutive because I live in a land of waterfalls, with Lookout Mountain stretching south and west from my home in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Mountain is a misnomer, for it is a plateau eighty miles long and stretching across the corners of three states. The twin cities of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee and Lookout Mountain. Georgia occupy its northeast end and several villages dot the rest of its landscape. Several steams and one river originate atop the plateau and flow to the valley below. In the Georgia portion, a stream at Cloudland Canyon State Park flows over two falls visible from a hiking trail which descends limestone steps from the top. 

Further south, in Alabama, the Little River descends DeSoto Falls at DeSoto State Park, named for the explorer whose party passed near by when Spain was the colonial power in the southern parts of what is now the United States. The Little River continues down the plateau to Little River Falls, where it enters the Little River Canyon, a gorge with high limestone cliffs on either side. It is a National Preserve. The name Little River is locally confusing. Another river with the same name flows through part of the Great Smoky Mountains, two hours to the Northeast. 

I have visited and photographed these grander falls in autumn and winter when the flow is small and in spring when they become raging cataracts. By comparison, Glen Falls is a mere trickle, a gentle stream such as are found throughout the length of Lookout Mountain to the south, the Cumberland Plateau to the west, and the Appalachian Mountains to the east, all within a day’s drive. Each of those regions has a few thundering waterfalls and many smaller ones, the likes of Glen Falls. 

When I wrote the poem, right here at Glen Falls, the leaves were just emerging from buds and the birds were still winter residents, awaiting the arrival of the river of warblers which flows through our forests in spring and fall. Spring wildflowers were still a hope in the heart. 

The poem, “Glen Falls Trail,” began with a list of words, a writing prompt received at the open mic at a local bookstore. It also began with the murmur of the stream over the falls, and graffiti, “George Loves Lisa,” painted on a rock at the bluff above the falls. The poem ends with the lines:

“I never knew this George or Lisa
The rock bears their names in silence, 
names the stream forgot years ago.” 

There ended the poem, but not the story. I submitted the poem to a writing contest sponsored by the Tennessee Writers Alliance and later learned that I had won second place. I was invited to read the poem at an awards ceremony at the Southern Festival of Books that October, to take place 100 miles away in Nashville, the state capitol, on Legislative Plaza. 

As summer progressed, I rehearsed the poem a few times and noticed I had less energy than before. Though only fifty-four years old, I thought my reduced energy a result of aging. Meanwhile, I took a job which proved to be more physically demanding and I noticed myself sleeping more hours each night. I thought it was just my body adjusting to the demands of the job, but in September my doctor performed a stress test and sent me to a cardiologist. The specialist performed an angiogram and declared that I would undergo Cardiac Bypass Surgery the following day.

I objected. It was a Thursday, and my awards ceremony was on a Saturday, just sixteen days away. More than that, I had been relatively healthy all my life and I could not adjust to the idea that I was not well. From the turning point of my successful poem I was at another of despair, thinking I might die during surgery or I might become an invalid. 

Friday night and early Saturday I was in and out of consciousness like a failing florescent light on a marquee, the type which flickers to life, burns brightly for a while, and fades with an audible buzzing sound. By Saturday night I was in a private room, where I would remain for six more days. The mental adjustment after such a surgery is a whole other story.

After discharge from the hospital, I rested for three days at a friend’s house before returning to my apartment, where I kept everything within reach, not reaching over my head, and ate a healthier diet, but one which I consumed voraciously. My neighbor Julie spoke to me and agreed to drive me to Nashville for the awards ceremony, a promise she immediately regretted. She became convinced that I would die on the trip, but when Saturday arrived, we departed for Nashville with her friend Matt along for support. I slept most of the way, full of pain medicine and with the stress of a healing body. 

At Legislative Plaza, the sun was bright and the crowd noisy. It was my first visit to a crowded urban area since the surgery, and I was in my own world. The canopy under which the ceremony would take place was surprisingly easy to find, though the ceremony was one of several simultaneous programs taking place on the plaza and in the surrounding buildings. I picked up a copy of the program for the festival, a document the size of a small tabloid newspaper, and noticed that a friend had given a reading the day before. Too bad I missed it.

I greeted the mistress of ceremonies, my poem in one hand and a heart shaped pillow in the other. I explained the importance of the pillow in helping me clear my lungs, speaking to her bemused countenance. The pillow was emblazoned with a lovely color schematic of a human heart, not of the valentine’s day ilk.

Fortunately, the emcee explained my journey to arrive at the ceremony before I stepped to the microphone. Though I did not bob and weave like an owlet, I was somewhat unsteady on my feet as I read what was in fact an early draft of the poem and not a copy of the submitted manuscript. According to my neighbor, I accelerated and slowed the pace of my reading in a random manner. I finished to the reluctant applause of an audience of strangers. 

With my return to Chattanooga, my neighbor amazed I did not die on the trip, I spent more and more time on the porch, listening to the sweet sounds of chickadees and titmice. I wrote very little, but my inspiration from Glen Falls and survival of the trip to Nashville convinced me to continue as a poet. 

I have since visited Glen Falls on numerous occasions and written two more poems there. I have discovered that I write best while outdoors and have published several poems. The poem “Glen Falls Trail” went on to be included in the Southern Poetry Anthology: Volume VI, Tennessee, an annual publication of the Texas Review Press. Each year, they publish a volume of poetry from one state, so most poets have but one chance to be included. Most of the poets are far better known than me and most have three poems in the volume in comparison to my one. I am honored to be included.

Book Signing at Star Line Books

Ray Zimmerman is pleased announce a book signing for his new poetry and photography chap book Healing and Conflict:

Saturday, November 24

1 PM to 3 PM

Star Line Books

1467 Market Street, Suite 106

www.starlinebooks.com 

(423) 777-5629

This will be a second chance for those who missed the book launch earlier this month.

More than half of the poems are previously published in journals, including:

The Avocet (Fountain Hills, AZ)

Number One (Gallatin, TN)

Quill and Parchment (Online)

Weatherings Anthology (FutureCycle Press, Lexington, KY)

Terrence Chouinard of The Wing and the Wheel Press contributed the perfect typography and design skills to this collection. The local Chattanooga printing company Wonder Press did an excellent job with production. The author will assume primary distribution at readings, signings and open mic events. The book is locally written and locally printed.

Fellow poets had this to say about the advance copy:

Ray Zimmerman’s collection of poems Healing and Conflict invites the reader outside: “go and watch/rain falling on parched earth. /see it come back to life.” His words, like that rain, are transformative to those who look and listen. Trees burn with ice, water cascades, booming, against mountain hardwoods. Most memorable are the birds. Warblers, hawks, barred owls, chickadees, and cranes provide this book’s unifying motif, and a delightful surprise, when the reader joins a flock of blackbirds in flight.

Marsha Mathews,

Author of Beauty Bound        

“I have come to understand / that my poems are not poems…but the poetics of the earth” (“Intro Part I”). Ray Zimmerman explores nature through language and language through nature. With images and similes like “The winter snow arrived like a sonnet. / It reached the house in three waves, / capped by a couplet of ice” (“Winter Snow”), the reader becomes immersed in Zimmerman’s vivid landscape, both verbal and actual. Though he claims, “My poems are shadows on the wall” (“Intro Part II”), Zimmerman’s words intrigue the reader as she delves into the subtext of these poems, and they continue to haunt her long after the book is closed.

KB Ballentine

Almost Everything, Almost Nothing

In “Introduction, Part II, Zimmerman says “If you enjoy my poem about falling rain or about cranes in flight…go and watch rain falling on parched earth…listen to cranes trumpeting as they take to the air.” In Healing, these poems not only have a prayerful devotion to the natural world but use specific names, images and Zimmerman’s hard-won humor from handling hawks, eagles and owls. In Conflict, he reminds us of the massive plastic islands humans have left floating in the oceans, of trends of certain species’ depletions. Yet, this chapbook is a celebration of birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals, of seasons and landscapes of planet earth, narrated with sensory details and a deeply personal voice.

--Bill Brown, The News Inside

Sunrise

Sunrise

November 11, 2016

The morning sun gave light in brilliant bands of red, offset by cloud cover gray, the sort of brilliant sunrise once attributed to air pollution. The air still smelled of yesterday’s smoke, a thick haze of particles. I could smell the smoke in my apartment, in my workplace, and anywhere I went outside. I was frightened.

I had heard about how the fire at Gatlinburg had invaded the city and burned a thousand buildings, but that did not frighten me. Neither did the tales of all the timber burned at Cohutta wilderness in North Georgia.

Health alerts from local agencies warned those with heart disease, asthma, and other conditions aggravated by poor air quality to stay indoors, run air conditioning not at all. I have heart disease, asthma, and other conditions aggravated by poor air quality. I was afraid I would breathe smoke until I gurgled my last breath through congested bronchial tubes, unlike the pleasant sensation as my exhalations once gurgled from the hose of a regulator as I observed shocking neon green and blue fish at coral reefs near the Florida Keys.

This dry October caped the hottest summer on record, with the driest October in 140 years, according to official figures.  A man from California said that this is no drought, not like it is out west, with his state and several others dividing the water from the Colorado River. That river becomes a dry stream bed by the time it reaches the Sea of Cortez.

This year, our relative abundance of water is paltry. The parched leaves and twigs of forests became a tinder box prepared for any spark. The land may lose its hair at any turn.

Mountains blaze in Georgia and East Tennessee. Gatlinburg suffered the worst but is not alone. Campfires are strictly prohibited. Lightning struck at Cohutta Wilderness. The area remains closed until further notice. Fires rage on Fox Mountain and Signal Mountain, on Lookout Mountain, and at Cleveland, Tennessee. More fires blaze in North Carolina.

Meanwhile, there is good news from out West. Conservation groups bought some water rights and left a little water in the Colorado. Water reached the Sea of Cortez and recharged marshes and estuaries.

Here in Tennessee, we hope for rain that the green earth may be restored.

Further reading:

We think of fire as a hazard to the natural world and to ourselves, but some natural areas depend on fire for their continued existence. In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer address our relationship to nature. The chapter “Burning the Headland,” specifically addresses beneficial aspects.

Question:

How do you feel when confronted with aspects of nature that are beyond our control?

Eyeshine

February: Eyeshine

A warm winter night sent me down the road with car windows open. My body told my mind that anything could happen. The mountain road was lonely enough to break your heart … or fill it to overflowing.

The green shine of an eye rose on the road, perhaps the eye of a deer. As I hit the brakes a much smaller creature appeared. A fox ran off the road and into the bushes below.

I exited the car and walked to the side of the road, but the fox was gone. I turned to walk back and glimpsed fur on the roadside. Three young foxes lay on the berm. I could have tapped them with a toe but did not.

Instinct told them, “don’t move if you want to live.” They lay as flat to the ground as possible. Their eyes were paradoxically rolled up to the top of their heads, fixed on me, the large predatory threat above. In this pose they looked as though a cartoon artist had drawn them there, among the sparse roadside vegetation in the light of a half moon.

Their fur looked coarse with the guard hairs which protect wild creatures from briars and catch snow, natures insulation for the body beneath. Under the guard hairs, the short fur next to the body would be soft as a duckling’s down, warm to the touch.

I did not try to touch the three. Foxes can give a painful bite and are known to carry disease, including rabies, but there was more to it than that. Seeing them here in the light of a half moon was a rare gift of nature, whom I have called my muse. I would intrude into their world no further.

Caught up in the magic of that moment, I nearly jumped when a fast-moving shape cut through the brush below; crashing through the woods as if it were a bear or a human. When I looked back down, the three were gone, following an adult fox to safety.

I have since pondered that distraction. Foxes can move silently. Why did the adult fox crash so noisily through the underbrush? It had to be an intentional distraction. It got me to look away as the three escaped. I was sure that these three would safely reach adulthood, though they certainly are gone by now, more than twenty years later.

For further reading:

Sally Carrigher gave close views of wild creatures in her books, including One day at Beetle Rock, The Twilight Seas, One day at Teton Marsh, and several others.

For the Reader:

Describe your own close encounter with a wild creature.

Eye of the Beholder

I rode in on the dirty dog, as they call the Greyhound bus, Ohio farm dirt still in my hair. At least I had the sense to clean the cow shit off my boots.

Then I briefly lost my luggage, or so I thought, standing there in the Port Authority of New York. They could call me any name in the book, or even a few that weren’t, but I was stubborn and would not get on that local to London, Connecticut, until I saw my duffle bag stuffed into the compartment underneath the bus.

Despite reassurances that my luggage would catch up with me, I remained steadfast until a man appeared driving the world’s smallest tractor. He pulled behind him a string of small carts with my duffle bag standing up in the first one. He just shook his head as he loaded it into the luggage compartment.

“Sit up front, son,” the driver said. “There aren’t that many passengers on Sunday Morning, not even at port authority. Keep your eyes peeled and I will show you one of the sights not on the official tour.” With those words, he backed the bus out and exited the bowels of that building through a grimy archway.

Born onto that city street, I shielded my eyes from the light and looked to my left.  There they were, lined up as they must often beat the precinct. Number three, take one step forward and turn left.

The driver turned his speaker system to public address and said, “Good morning, ladies.” One of them smiled and waved, as the others glared. “They think I’m bad for business,” he said.

They were prettier than I would have expected, dressed in hot pants and leg warmers with the temperature not twenty degrees out. Now that’s dedication.

Commentary

The story is a performance piece, based on, but exaggerating actual events My writings identify me as a person most at home in the woods, but I have come to appreciate urban environments and realize that even the cityscapes are part of nature, what is sometimes called the “built environment.” Trees grow out of walls, nighthawks circle parking lots hunting insects, and migrating cranes sometimes circle downtown Chattanooga on their way to Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge. The book, Coming of Age at the End of Nature, with introduction by Bill McKibben and including essays by members of the millennial generation, addresses coming to peace with nature impacted by human activity.

For the Reader:

How do you respond to urban environments?

Where is wilderness in your world?

Do you see nature as ending or enduring? 

Bull Gator's Lament, with Introduction

Introduction

            I am writing a series of blog posts which may become a short book of daily meditations on the natural world. Some of these entries began as short articles published in newsletters and periodicals. Some began as performance pieces read or recited to live audiences. In some cases, I learned the hard way how long is too long for a performance piece. I also learned that the tolerance for lengthy pieces varies from one audience to another in sometimes unpredictable ways.

Some of the pieces were written as short essays and combined for submission to journals as braided essays. Longer pieces are fine as essays, but do not work well as orations, so I have unwound a few essays into component parts to create the short meditations presented here and for use in performance art.

In most cases I have included citations to places where the reader can find more information. Use of these references is, of course, up to you, but I want your experience of the pieces to be as much about you, the reader, as it is about me, the author. I have also posed questions which you may view as a starting point for your own meditation, an opportunity for rebuttal, or questions to be ignored. A few people may view them as writing prompts. Posting them on my blogs creates opportunities for reply.

Bull ’Gator’s Lament

What’s that man lookin’ at, down here in this cypress swamp, so thick with branches that the sun barely gets through? He’s lookin’ at me, Old Bull ’Gator, and I’m lookin’ at him.  Why don’t you come on over for dinner?

Speaking of dinner, you should have been here when I grabbed that turtle from his sunny spot over there by the water hyacinths. When I broke through to meat, those tourists thought a rifle shot had gone off. Fish, man, bird, or turtle, I get my dinner.

Sometimes, man eats us though. He’ll come down to this swamp and put a bullet in a ’gator’s brain. Those poachers don’t waste any time. They skin the ’gator out right here and cut up the tail meat for Cajun delight. The hide gets made into boots.

The poachers never got me though. Bigger ’gators missed their chance too. I had to be careful when I was young, because we've been known to eat our own. But now, I’m king of this here swamp.

Springtime is my favorite time of year, with Spanish Moss fluttering in the breeze, like curtains in an old mansion house. That’s when I get to bellowing. My bellows echo off the cypress trunks and all through the swamp. Those lady ’gator’s bellow right back. When one of them judges Old Bull fit, we spin like two demons in a whirlpool.

Pretty soon, she will be building a nest out of mud and sticks. When the eggs hatch that fierce old momma ’gator hears those young’uns grunting She gently pulls the nest apart and tenderly frees the baby ’gators. That’s when she won’t want Old Bull around, because we’ve been known to eat our own.

Maybe I’ll just wonder off and watch those fishing boats go by. Perhaps one of them will flip over. Man, fish bird or turtle, I get my dinner.

Look over yonder at those little ’gators sunning themselves on their momma’s snout. I believe one of them is a baby bull. He will have to grow some before he can be king of my swamp. 

Commentary:

Bull ’Gator’s Lament is a performance piece, generally well received by the audience. It was once much longer and is now shortened to a length that works better. I will continue to refine it as I present it at more venues. It is of course, pure fantasy. For a factual look an alligator’s habitat, read Everglades, River of Grass by Marjory Stoneman Douglass

For the Reader:

Though nature is sometimes portrayed in the cuddly realm of soft bunny rabbits and downy goslings, predation is a day to day reality. Some animals are downright frightening.  

How to you perceive the natural world?

Is it a resource for the creation of wealth through extraction of such materials as timber and coal?

Is it a wilderness to be protected, or perhaps tamed?

Is it a place of solace and healing?

Is it a frightening place?