A Poem by Shelby Stephenson

From Country

You can look back at the resume of western swing and remember

McAuliffe, Leon. How I love to sing and live amid reminiscences!
 

At our son Jacob’s wedding at Warren Wilson College, I met

Billy Edd Wheeler. He wrote “Jackson,”
 

which Johnny Cash and June Carter recorded:

Billy Edd tells the story how that song came out of
 

his seeing “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Wheeler also wrote “The Reverend Mister Black,”
 

“Coward of the Country,” and hundreds

more, including “Ode to the Little Brown
 

Shack Out Back,” prompting Nin and me to restore

our two-holer: you can’t tell by odor
 

the quiet moments in a place like that: my

brother Paul read his love letters there: you
 

can’t tell the depth of the well by the length

of the handle on the pump either: Louis Prima!
 

Keely Smith! Josh White carried his folk songs

everywhere: FDR asked him to perform
 

at the White House. Songs of the people! I

imagine White singing “Boll Weevil,” “Frankie
 

and Johnny,” “Trouble in Mind,” and another

I learned from him, “Foggy, Foggy Dew,” plus
 

one more − “He Never Said a Mumbling Word”: March

’63 through December ’64, I worked for
 

A.T. & T. Long Lines, White Plains, New York, travelling

the northeast, buying land for microwave towers
 

and easements for underground cables and

I bought a small portable phonograph
 

to carry from motel to hotel in

my car, that black blob of a Plymouth Fury, whose
 

rear fenders swooped up and out like a caution: I

played Josh White on that phonograph, my
 

1960 Austin-Healey Sprite, the last of the

Bug-eyes, at home: I enrolled as a special
 

student in English, University

of Pittsburgh, January, 1965, to see
 

if I could get back that old feeling I had

for words − poems, songs, stories: I knew
 

the first night in a room I rented from

Mrs. Charles Caldwell, Regent Square, Swissvale, that
 

I would stay in school: I called my mother

and she announced she was pulling onions
 

out of the backyard when she’d drive the

Sprite for groceries; she said, “Son, your
 

Daddy says you don’t get in this thing, you

put it on”: Mama, I think of you when
 

I hear Josh White sing, “Were You There

When They Crucified My Lord”: remember, O
 

Bede, when dusk burns and my children’s

children flutter somewhere in memory
 

like a bird trying to fly through one window

and out the other − remember Who knows
 

what musical jam might field the singer’s

eyes − Walt, Emily, the Beowulf 
 

poet, Ammons, Roethke, Robert Lowell, Thomas Wolfe,

O Lost − one life, fat or slim, whittled-down
 

and left alone like Slim Whitman to sing

“Indian Love Call,” the song my brother Paul
 

sang at many weddings when I was starting

to remember, looking back to understand
 

How our school principal, Mr. N.G. Woodlief

could say often of Paul − He’s good at
 

dramatics − Paul, Rube Priest of our gigs: “You

just blow me away,” he’d say, raking his hand
 

through no-hair on his bald head or, to repeat, looking

at Nin, sizing me up: “Linda, do you ever wake up
 

grumpy?” Linda: “No, I just let him sleep”: I

don’t think we sow what we reap or sharpen what
 

we hoe, do you? Why, for instance, befuddles me, these

people have not been selected for the Country
 

Music Hall of Fame? I mention George Hamilton IV

again: Slim Whitman? Wynn Stewart! Hamilton and Whitman
 

spend a lot of time performing in England. Why

not adorn the walls of the hall with these
 

names: Jean Shepard (whoopee, inducted 2011),

Johnny Wright, Jeannie Sealy, Jimmy Capps,
 

Jimmy Martin, Bashful Brother Oswald,

Leon Rhodes, Hal Rugg, and more − more. Where’s
 

the reef which boulders the decisions to include

the side-pickers and players, pianists like
 

Hargus “Pig” Robbins, for example − fiddlers

like Tommy Jackson, Gordon Terry, Johnny Gimble,
 

Wade Ray, Paul Warren, Kenny Baker, Benny Martin,

Jason Carter, Ramona Jones, Elana James. Whitman’s
 

a Floridian, born Otis Dewey Whitman, Jr. My

Whitman’s Samplers melt away in the cupboard! Whitman
 

sweltered regularly on the Louisiana Hayride, raking up

bales of hits over the years: “Secret Love,” “The Bandera Waltz,”
 

“Love Song of the Waterfall,” lyrics which seem

made for Yodeler Slim: he was a good baseball
 

player, too, like Bill Monroe, Charley Pride, Jim Reeves,

Roy Acuff: there’s a small book which could
 

go on a table in a small hotel or bed-and-breakfast: “Ball

Players Who Keep Their Pitch While Pulling Up
 

Their Overalls to See Stars”: Slim sang one called

“Rainbows Are Back in Style”: my style’s to push
 

the W’s to roar after the Z’s tirement to a

heedless estate: I’ll say, “Think I’ll go fishing, it’s
 

my lazy day”: The Wilburn Family came along

that way − Teddy and Doyle − what a family − picking
 

and singing on street corners, discovered by

Roy Acuff, arriving on the Opry in ’61. As
 

duet-singers go, T & D Wilburn go pretty far

into any roll call: Karl and Harty, Bailes Brothers,
 

Bailey Brothers, Johnson Brothers, Louvins, Jim and

Jesse, the Malpass Brothers, Ted Jones and his
 

dad, Ronnie: some Ted and Doyle Wilburn

hits: “Trouble’s Back in Town,” “Roll Muddy River,”
 

“Someone Before Me,” “Knoxville Girl,” “Cry, Cry Darling.”

Wilburns: Teddy and Doyle, Geraldine, Leslie, and Lester.
 

D.K. Wilgus loved to conjure hillbilly music way back

there, when lyrics came from the mouths of the
 

people and legends were real as bats, mockingbirds, and

mouth-harps: Wilgus belonged to the American
 

Folklore Society when folklore was cool: I

belong to several societies, myself: Scottish
 

Society of North Carolina: there’s a little

scotch in me; North Caroliniana Society: my
 

friend H.G. Jones pretty much started it and

keeps it going: Nin’s mother was a Blue
 

Stocking: I’d get a hole in my sock and turn

that heel-hole part up on my foot; I never
 

belonged to the Holey Sock Society: my feet

would get rusty and hard: I took a weekly bath in
 

a washtub set in the middle of the pantry floor

next to Mama’s Home Comfort Range, dancing
 

with woodsmoke and wonder, while pigs-feet

steamed in vinegar and the reservoir heated
 

the little room. Every stove-eye gleamed red. When

I was fourteen that world ended except in my
 

mind. That was’52. My father had thirty-five

dogs and not a one named Blue: he praised his
 

“blue-speckled bitches” that ran the gray or red. As

a folklorist D. K. Wilgus swelt the land: he took
 

hillbilly music seriously: as the little boy Buster Brown

might say from his shoe, “Check him out, his name
 

is in the card catalogue and, of course, on-line, too”: I’ll

give the next entry to Hank Williams, since he’s the
 

crux of my love of poetry and music: he was

alive at the start of ’52, the year my life stopped
 

twice: left The Plankhouse and Hank died to take

on “phantom power”: I never understood that, how
 

microphones work: Hank didn’t have to worry about

such: fifty-eight years ago, January 1, 1953, I heard
 

on the radio that “Hank Williams is dead”: I was

standing under the walnut tree in the barnyard, as I’ve
 

said before, a Tree in Memory and

no longer out there, surrounding my childhood’s
 

ignorance in figures − low-flying mockingbirds, waves

of stories wafting, turning up their edges in verses, songs.




Shelby Stephenson's Family Matters: Homage to July, the Slave Girl won the 2008 Bellday Prize for Poetry, Allen Grossman, judge.