Image of Sam Friedman, Helen's father, discovered in a drawer at the Friedman home and shared with the world by the kindly folks at Tuscaloosa News.
After polishing off Helen F. Blackshear's memoir, Mother Was A Rebel: In Praise of Gentle People, I reread a few of her poems with the additional reference points. There is something so juicy and summer-laden about reading poems informed by the poet's biography, especially when the same scent of soil and sun runs through both lives.
Helen wrote this poem while wandering through her family's property along the banks of Bee Branch, one of the major tributaries to Hurricane Creek. It reveals her family's deep ties to the local landscape and its natural beauty. Next week, I'm going to ask her daughters about her ghost and whether Helen kept this poem-promise. In the meantime, savor the poem and ask yourself if there is some landscape which bonds you to your family. Or, explore the artwork of Helen's daughter, Sue Blackshear.
THE BONDING
These woods have captured me.
Ghosts wait where the past turns.
My grandfather, immigrant Jew from Hungary,
bought this land, searching for coal
and bored these prospect holes along the creek.
Perhaps, stopping to smell pink
honeysuckle clinging to the cliff,
he too fell captive here.
I feel his presence.
My father knew these pines from boyhood
when he swam naked in this stream.
Later he built a summer cabin here
for our holidays.
In his eighties he still took walks
most mornings, tree pruners shouldered
to free some tender dogwood sapling
from entangling vines.
If it is true that ghosts may linger
in places they have loved, perhaps my children too
will find me here,
caught in a woods spell.
