Stellaria Poem by James Murdock

When the last breath of night
has been exhaled
and when its sigh has been heard
through these wooden windows.
When a voice from within
has spoken softly to my body
and in my mind has opened
the flower of morning.
And when the day is not rushed
and in a terrible hurry.
When I may take the time
to see
a pale purple
which has been hung
overhead the distant canopy.
When I strap boots
to my feet
which are wanting
to walk out
and greet the mustards.
When I can trample clovers
all folded in coldness,
I do.

This is not a perfect land.
It is a place of turmoil and mystery.
There is no banner to grace its head
and I am no prince.
Perhaps I am exposed here
like the clay.
No more elevated
than my rude-mannered predecessors,
who ran the topsoil away
and threw the forests into the seas.
Who planted their cotton in rows
unseemly to nature.
If I have a coat of arms,
it must be lichen
painted on a loblolly.
My only colors are the earth.
My only religion is the morning.
I must atone of pigweed.

Young prunus americana
standing in the light—
you are like a preacher.
If only all preachers were so quiet.
My mouth does not speak the good word
unless the good word is wordless.
And I am only required to sacrifice
my hands being tender things.

Chinaberry, privet
you run amok.
Yet there are gifts in the field
so unrefined.
Items not counted,
not coddled
by the hands of men.
Some Stellaria media,
not half eaten by chickens,
or peed on by my hound,
is what I am after
before my work begins.

Stellaria around the edge of the garden
is a plain and delicate carpet of sorts.
It has small tender pointed leaves
and tiny white flowers.
Hence the common name,
star chickweed.
It is an utterly attractive green.
Grows here spring summer
fall and winter and is
only suppressed by
the few days a year of
freezing weather.
Or when the dogday sun
is too scalding.
Still then, it can be found
in the shaded peace
of the forest's floor.
In this lush land
between two great rivers,
Oconee and Ocmulgee,
in Georgia's eastern piedmont.

It reminds me of how lovely
a simple thing can be.
That it is free and that it gleams
in morning light.
And that it rises to meet the sun
like me.
And that it fills me up
and starts the wheels of my
right action.
I write this poem
as the first chapter of a book
that is to tell the story
of my responsibility
to this land.
And of my allegiance
to the forces here
which sustain
my family.

I am walking toward paradise
with Wendell Berry.
There is no Organism without
Environment;
no foot without a floor;
no poem without a reader;
no me without you.
Like dear Janisse has so
wisely spoken,
the story of me is now
inseparable from
the story of this place.
The stellaria and I are one.

- - -

My brother wakes up abruptly
in his city.
Not from the light of day
but from some screaming.
If it was a cat or a woman
he is not sure.
He was just dreaming.
And then cars and buses and horns
and the sounds of his neighbor
flushing their toilet from over his head
assures him, he his awake.
And he curses them under his breath
and then as they shuffle
with feet that sound like someone
dropping firewood
on the floor above his head,
he curses them loudly.
He rubs his hungover eyes
and is done with battling.
Straps sneakers to his feet.
Goes out to get coffee,
something to eat.

As he creeps down the sidewalk,
he thinks of my garden.
And as I am on my knees in a pagan prayer,
I think of him there.
And at that moment we are smiling
through sixty miles of space
at one another.
We know each of us has lost
something in the places
we have chosen for ourselves.
I laugh out loud,
having never thought I'd be here.
He laughs at me
and we are free.
To laugh at ourselves
for the mistakes we've made.
But both knowing we are lucky,
would never call them mistakes.

Still, I think I am the luckier of the two.
Having married into hundreds of acres
of fields and woods.
Brock Farm.
Here in north Jasper County.
My wife, my daughter, two dawgs,
cows, pigs, chickens.
her grandmother,93.
And sharp as the sun.
her dad—my father-in-law.
Charles Brock.
He's the farmer here. The
tractor magician. Hayseed sayer
of one-liner gold. King
of the Shady Dale Tractor Pull.
Relic of the old south.

I am no farmer.
More of a resident gardener.
More of a resident poet,
to tell the truth.
One who is fond of ruminating.
Knowing a few precepts of conservation,
having little will to conserve.
The understory is out of control.
Would rather find my place
in the quiet attic
overlooking the fields.
Or on the bed of the small stream
running from our cattle pond.
Or trespassing to pluck ginger
from a neighbor's hillside.
Or counting flowers.
Or counting birds.
Perhaps that thicket will be burned
someday soon.
After a fine poem has been
scribbled down.
After a slice of heaven
has been served
to someone undeserving.
After all these damn invasive bushes
have been pruned back this winter
and so forth and so on
ad absurdum.

If you can't laugh at yourself,
what are you doing?
If you can't do nothing
—may I ask you—
what have you done?
What I have done is made a place
for my city rat friends
to find an escape
from the madness of their streets.
And what they have done for me
is allowed me to get drunk
on their apartment floors.
Where I can lie after sleepless nights
and for hours living a beatnik life
and dreaming of life
like great buildings
and monuments
have been dreamt
into creation.
And for a short time
I may escape
all the silence of the farm.
While still knowing
within my heart
that the world needs
more quiet hours
and I am needed there.

While still knowing that
I should take a sledge hammer
to my TV.
That thing is like warfare
on my consciousness.
While still knowing
that the time has come
to turn off the screens!
The only good computer is a dead one,
I said to a friend.
And here I sit now and type
on the damned thing.

But my hands are always wanting
for something older,
like a typewriter.
And my eyes are always searching
for papery bark.
But this farm is on a hill
and there are no river birches
within walking distance.
And my mouth is always after
soft plants in the spring.
And my heart,
what it wants is always a mystery.
But it seems to be longing
to lie down in the soil.
To cover its body with detritus
but to remain somehow alive.
To be one with that savage
and wild thing.
To be planted.
To sing that although churches
cover the surface,
this is still the land of Hitchiti.
And the ground beneath us
is still magic and brutal.
It is calling us.
It is calling me now.
To kneel before it.