Back-Handed Benediction and Back Roads

By Rachel Landrum Crumble

Back-Handed Benediction

I hung on, like a battered wife
blaming myself for manifold
injustices. You severed me from
my dignity, but I was haunted
by my true identity.

You warned me to shut up and sit down
but I stood up and sang—
if only in poetry.

While fault lines deepened
between my eyebrows,
and worry pulled the purse strings
of my lips in a kiss-my-ass pout,
rebellious gray hairs sprouted
from my head, defying gravity.

Your gravity pressed stress pounds
on my frame, making my body a burden,
yet my words were nimble children
playing in fields of tall grass, without
adult fears of ticks and snakes,
trampling out mazes, leading to rooms
for everyone. There, I was free.

Institutions are insensible things
with no memory or conscience.
You mugged me of my humanity,
used my sleek Stradivarius soul
to dig ditches, yet even the strings
clogged with dirt vibrated
with uncensored life.

Back Roads

I sometimes choose them, because of my father,
an educated Colorado farm boy,
and my mother, a blue blood
who left me her artist’s eye for detail.

Autumn’s first blush deepens in sugar maple
and sumac as I wind up Georgia 136 East across
Burnt Mountain, Eagle Ridge,
dwarfed by ancient pitch pines, Georgia oaks,
white ash and hickory.

I am weary of the fast-moving traffic
of this world, wanting to avoid the sad
caravan of refugees of the latest hurricane
fleeing the coast.

Ancient gray shacks cling to mountain
shadows, even as upscale subdivisions scar the land.

A bobcat crosses a lonely stretch of 76 West,
through farmlands, another refugee
of encroachment. Deep in the mountains of South Carolina,
shotgun slung across his chest like a confederate soldier,
an old hunter in faded camo steps out of the woods
as if stepping out of Time,
dignified as a daguerreotype.

A confederate flag flies above an Appalachian compound
of weathered timber and junk cars, reminding me why
I adventure here alone. Traveling these parochial roads
with my dark-skinned husband would be dangerous,
fool-hardy.

When sunset fades in Hiawassee, dusk falls fast
on zigzag mountain roads. Further along,
in the Nantahala, I study the yellow reflectors hard. 
The exam is darkness so profound
in the Ocoee River gorge, I can only breathe
when the ribboning road climbs up,
flattens out, sets me back on the well-lit
two lane interstate, miles from the wild.

Rachel Landrum Crumble recently retired from teaching high school, having previously taught kindergarten through college. She has published in The Porterhouse Review, Typishly, SheilaNaGig, and Common Ground Review, Spoon River Review, The Banyan Review and others. Her first poetry collection, Sister Sorrow, was published by Finishing Line Press in January 2022. She lives with her husband of 42 years, a jazz drummer, and near 2 of their 3 adult children, and two adorable grand twins.  poetteachermom.com is her website.