Oak, by Atsuro Riley

This poem is a character study of a child, related by a speaker who gives us only splotches. The voice is strong and pure. The sound and syntax feel sinewy and strange. G.M. Hopkins is here in these made-up compound words. I love the near rhyme at the end. And I wonder, Who's the oak?  

Why is this a poem? Because to say it another way would be: "Tammy thought of her absent father as the big oak tree that all of us hurting, fatherless children used to play on."  

The more I read this, the more beautiful it is.

More of this poet. 

Oak

We were all of us empty of its heft and Tammy could tell.

 

   •

  

Being she herself was (wildling) (loosestrife-weed)

(undaddied) same as us.

  

    •

  

Flung chaff-motes that we were

she saw to tell us time and time that yonder oak its bark and bulk.

  

    •

  

She harped on it; she rendered.   Instilled-

elucidated treeness piece by part.

  

    •

  

Have I said yet (howsoever she'd've told us) it was never it to her but him.

  

    •

  

As in I school myself   I climb the bluff   I followfeel the roots of  him.   They river-

bound They gnarlin' up from mud [black pluff!] He veins the bank.

  

    •

  

Some say.  Word was.

—That her (fleetblooded) actual daddy jacked the toll-thru (humps the trains).

  

    •

  

She dwelled on it; she brooded.   Elaborated-

fleshed for us especially much his arms.

  

    •

  

How one mossy brawn-span she favored

had been scathed (engraved along its length) by lightning.

  

    •

  

How the long-muscled (strict, striated) river-hanging-over one would hold.

  

    •

  

You could loop a rope there Nearabout the bicep

Whap you up a wide horsehead knot to grip.   To ride good Rid fear Let's

not feature no blackflow flowin' down below.

  

    •

  

Cling strong till your hands numb till your blood goes.

Swing low.   You could bellow you could holler while you're at it (Bending with you

not to break) You could set yourself swayin' till kingdom come Till he hears you till

  

    •

  

he weighs you.  You could ring rightful like the tongue of a bell.

From Poetry Daily
Sept. 25, 2021
From the book Heard-Hoard by Atsuro Riley, published by the University of Chicago Press.





Swing on over.