arriving
By RON WHITEHEAD
POETRY SEMIFINALIST
not many deer crossed the road back then
but life was wild i remember the call
october 1959 i was nearly 9 mama was
in the house on the phone i could hear her
crying moaning talking i was standing behind
the barn it was hotter than hot i started praying
for granddaddy to live to be all right i was just
a boy but granddaddy was special to me real
special he was wild like the deer that appeared
and vanished when granddaddy drove 90 miles
per hour on highway 261 between fordsville
and hardinsburg heading from centertown to
valley station going home me riding shotgun
windows down flying on old kentucky country
backroads so many times granddaddy stopped
at the little mcquady grocery near rough river to get me
soda crackers and ginger ale cause back then
i got car sick but granddaddy only laughed and
smiling talked to me like i was real and not just
a kid i remember a 6 pack of beer on the floor
in the back and a pint of whiskey in the glove box
granddaddy was real when he breathed
the earth breathed he moved things he was
a grader operator building the watterson
expressway around louisville he was a barber
he cut hair he made records he traveled and
sang on radio stations and at concerts he
yodeled he cleared the land the rundown
farm he bought that had belonged to his
mom and dad my greatgrandparents render
he went fox and coon hunting with his friends
in the middle of the night always drinking
whiskey and telling stories that made the men
laugh i know cause i went with him whenever
i was allowed granddaddy didn’t preach but
his life was a sermon he was spirit holy spirit
no matter what anyone says so i drive fast
with the windows down and i don’t wear a seat belt
and i’m taking a hard curve with the long wind
and the tall green trees and the turquoise sky
and the energy comes to me and it fills me and
i feel what granddaddy felt the energy of life of sex
of love of family of longing and i smile and i cry
on this hot august morn and i know that somehow
granddaddy’s spirit is still here with me and my
head and my body want to explode but i hold
on to the wheel with all my might moving from
day into night and back to light finally finally
arriving
Ron Whitehead is a poet, writer, editor, publisher, organizer, scholar, and professor. He grew up on a farm in Kentucky and attended the University of Louisville and Oxford University. He is the recipient of numerous state, national, and international awards and prizes, including The All Kentucky Poetry Prize, The Joshua B. Everett Oxford Scholar Award, English Speaking Union Oxford Scholarship, and The Yeats Club of Oxford’s Prize for Poetry. Whitehead’s works have been published internationally in a diverse range of publications from Northwestern University’s Triquarterly to the Czech Republic’s Artforum to Japan’s Blue Beat Jacket to England’s Beat Scene to Louisana’s Southern Review and New York City’s Tribe magazine.
