Gravel and Hawk: Poems
By Betty Wood
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About this ebook
Gravel and Hawk dwells on the physical and cultural landscapes of the Texarkana border region, an area of stark natural beauty and even starker manifestations of its human habitation: oil derricks and pump jacks, logging trucks, chicken houses, come-to-Jesus billboards, and greasy catfish joints, a patchwork of dying farm towns and ragtag municipalities laced together by county roads, state highways, and that treacherous, rust-hued slurry known as the Red River. Gravel and Hawk charts the emotional landscape of a single extended family, its history of loss and gain, and, especially, its encounters with violent death. It is an eminently readable collection, rooted in a distinctly American place and united by a poetic voice that is honest, sophisticated, and persuasive.
Betty Wood
Betty Wood is lecturer in history at Girton College, Cambridge University.
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Gravel and Hawk - Betty Wood
Nostalgia
Awash in the lesser doldrums,
out the farm-to-market, past the S-
curves, far back from the road,
my grandparents’ farmhouse sat
surrounded by fields and pastures.
A pair of catalpas separated
from the yard a patch planted in cotton,
soybeans, maize, gave it a tucked-in
look it lost years later, when, after
the house had been let go, become
a hay barn (the barn itself become
a pile of tin and lumber), then
not even that, a crumbling cave-in,
something to stand back from,
a fallen soufflé with weeds
colonizing the porch, pouched
screens, catalpa stumps,
and the front patch a blister
of truck tire ruts where a custom
trailer outfit had thrown up
a metal barn to build its wares,
done its business, and going
defunct, left this for me
to come back to, and left it also
for you, reader of this