William Welch
William Welch lives in Utica, NY where he works as a registered nurse. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Mudlark, Little Patuxent Review, Stone Canoe, Cider Press Review, as well as others, and his collection Adding Saffron (Finishing Line Press) is forthcoming in 2025. He edits Doubly Mad (doublymad.org). Find more about him on his website, williamfwelch.com.
EARTH VERNACULAR
a poem for Lucille Clifton
Unnerving, how quiet
everything was this morning,
despite the wind.
Chairs had their backs turned toward me—
each of the jades bent near the window,
looking out, into the sky.
I sat alone, drinking coffee, thinking
of Lucille Clifton,
and how she heard a voice emanating from her teapot—
“any stone / can sing / we come
to languages / not lives / your tongue
is useful / not unique…”
Bless her. Bless her
for not succumbing to doubt
or surprise. She took the message down verbatim—
“it is not wise / to count oneself
the only servant / of ones lord…
in the saying of we / we are we…”
So I listened.
And thought about how
everything is
humming,
though only sometimes am I able to hear
this—
though only sometimes am I able to hear
this—
earth vernacular—
the slang of water,
sunlight’s patois.
It’s when I fail
to praise that
the other voices become audible to me.
Praise what? I ask them. For what reason?
How many children have died today
because have they no food, it’s not safe
for their fathers to go fill
water jugs. Their mother’s breasts
have gone dry…
But I listened.
And was afraid because I heard
only wind pushing its shoulders against the house,
slamming its fist into its palm,
stomping its feet
like a wrestler.
It seemed
everything had chosen silence.
The kitchen table vowed the mutism of a flat surface.
Fine snow falling
had taken on the aphasia
of starlight.
Now, I am standing
alone in a field called Andrustown.
Where corn grew last summer,
the shorn stalks look like surveyor’s posts
outlining the ruins
of a Haudenosaunee longhouse. A sign
outlining the ruins
of a Haudenosaunee longhouse. A sign
beside the road reads, here,
two hundred years ago, militiamen murdered three farmers
and burned their homesteads.
A mile away,
on lower ground, the gold-clad
onion domes of the Russian monastery
rise above gray trees.
And the whole earth is ringing
softly, like leaded crystal,
as though someone
prepared to speak
is tapping it with a knife.
note: lines in quotation are selected from the message from The Ones found in The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton
1965-2010.
