Linda Parsons
Poetry
Linda Parsons is a poet and playwright and formerly an editor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She is the reviews editor at Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, former poetry editor of Now & Then magazine, and has contributed to The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Shenandoah, and Ted Kooser’s syndicated column, American Life in Poetry, among other journals and anthologies. Her most recent poetry collection is This Shaky Earth, and her newest endeavor is writing for The Hammer Ensemble, the social justice wing of Flying Anvil Theatre.
Divine Rods
You must believe, and I do, believe
in the blood of my cousin thrice removed
who takes up copper rods to unearth
Civil War dead of the Franklin Campaign
whose father and grandmother witched
wells. Believe in the bartered blood
of Jesus, the Baptist cracker in my teeth.
Believe in these coat-hanger rods, plain
as the grail, as the questioning lips
at Gethsemani’s table. Believe in the fairy
ring of my backyard, the already gangly
tomatoes, Kinnebecks, chard sails hoisted,
the bed of lilies sounding brief horns
on Father’s Day. Believe the rods will
bend to Earth’s shaky mantle and tremble
as I approach the old cistern, plugged
with river rocks, buried in green
just as the tracks where he used to park
have grassed over. And they do, the rods,
nod inward, toward whatever depth
channeled April rains for whatever
generations removed from my dailiness
under the same roof, from my turning
of days’ deckled pages. Believe,
and I do, in watertables untapped,
tremors unfelt, in rods divining my move
from this world’s slippery source
to the next, realigned as if breath never
caught or turned askew, as if gravity’s
field or faith never held me dear.
in the blood of my cousin thrice removed
who takes up copper rods to unearth
Civil War dead of the Franklin Campaign
whose father and grandmother witched
wells. Believe in the bartered blood
of Jesus, the Baptist cracker in my teeth.
Believe in these coat-hanger rods, plain
as the grail, as the questioning lips
at Gethsemani’s table. Believe in the fairy
ring of my backyard, the already gangly
tomatoes, Kinnebecks, chard sails hoisted,
the bed of lilies sounding brief horns
on Father’s Day. Believe the rods will
bend to Earth’s shaky mantle and tremble
as I approach the old cistern, plugged
with river rocks, buried in green
just as the tracks where he used to park
have grassed over. And they do, the rods,
nod inward, toward whatever depth
channeled April rains for whatever
generations removed from my dailiness
under the same roof, from my turning
of days’ deckled pages. Believe,
and I do, in watertables untapped,
tremors unfelt, in rods divining my move
from this world’s slippery source
to the next, realigned as if breath never
caught or turned askew, as if gravity’s
field or faith never held me dear.
Listen: