Poetry

That hour my birthdays point back to, whoever
saw me first
noticed
certain things weren’t right.

This isn’t the girl his mom asked for and
damn! would you look at
that foot.
I could not see ahead the

years of people staring down, then
glancing up to see if all of me
was off
or only that. And kids

at the pool calling it a funny fat foot, and
later on my young daughter
asking
if all daddies had one.

And a clever M.D. said I might have made
a living as someone’s field goal
kicker
if the chance for that weren’t

past. He knew what congenital meant,
but strangers saw it as
a fault,
a deformity meaning the

Lord must have been in a bad humor
whatever morning he
made me,
and wouldn’t change a thing years

later when a four-year-old, who’d seen
me bare-legged, prayed I’d grow
some toes.
Which thank you would be nice.

And then the boy who saw me and the foot naked in
the swimming pool shower and called out for
his mother
to come in and see it.

And there were surgeries then, and those strange
surgical shoes which were always
a curiosity
to kids I hung around with.

All grown up now and the foot old as me,
the shoes and their fittings still
aren’t grand
but I myself mostly am, thank you.

Afterword

The experiences mentioned in these lines are all memories of mine. They actually happened in my early life. For readers who do not know me, I am happy to report that this disability was nothing near devastating. An old high school friend once told me he thought I was determined to prove I could do anything anybody else did, despite “that foot of yours.” And indeed, I used this foot as a football player, a hiker, mountain climber, tennis player, golfer, bicycle rider, etc. As a Boy Scout I once hiked the 35 mile “Lincoln Trail” in Kentucky by myself in one long single day. Most groups take three days or maybe two. While the foot has had various surgeries, over ten of them, it has still managed to serve as best it could for now 89 years.

You can email Ed Briggs HERE

Subscribing is free and gives you an email notification of new posts.

To share this article with a friend or on social media, select one of the options below.

The Mechanic

He has hair thick and
a waist thin and females
say uhh uhh when they

watch him come or go
either one and he minds
business about that every

night he feels like it so
no problem there but
here on the job today he

has grease and a dark
frown on his handsome
face as a dropped wrench

bangs his dodging foot
and damn he hollers cars
I don’t know like women.

say what?

thought i said clearly you
have a grey corduroy suit
in 38 long?
she said what color?
and i said grey and
she said 38 regular?
and i said no long
but none of it mattered because
she then said they
had no such suit

Closure

There are things that
having once known

you are changed
by enough so the

mind may say let
go but the heart

insists not so and
the war waged will

be settled one fair
day when the mind

is least suspecting.

If Only

If only it was left
for sun above to shine down
well and make to grow

again what grew so
fast one magic spell, there
might have been a

season right for this,
that grew so carefree once,
till midnight blackly

overhead a cloud of
troubles rose unseen to curse
a land so lately green,

where animals now
sigh for grief, the rabbits
walking oddly lame,

fishes still in their
water like shapes of rock,
the eyes of deer

fastened to their
hoof prints. And a flower,
a flower no wisdom

understood, died rare
and quiet in a smothered wood,
wasted for love.

And yonder where
a tree of promise brightly
grew, a twisted

bush was left to
own a ground it never knew.
Living, but sadly.

You can email Ed Briggs HERE

Subscribing is free and simply enables you to get an email notification of new posts.

To share this article with a friend or on social media, select one of the options below.

A 76-year-old woman was slain and her 43-year-old son was found suffering from slashed wrists and a drug overdose last night at their apartment in Beltsville, Prince George’s County police reported. Police said they obtained warrants charging the son with murder. — The Washington Post

How disappointing to be still alive,
your anger now a milder shade than when
it flared up high and messed with
you and Mom and everything. Had all

that you can take, a voice inside you said.
So late at night you finally let it out,
and later tried to put it out for good –
but somehow made a mess of that. And now

you’re sitting in this cell and wondering who’s
the luckier, you or Mom? You think it’s her,
for she’s not angry anymore. They’re through
with her, but only started in on you.

Hey, listen Judge, I’m not no kid, but damn
she bugged me every rotten day we lived.
Forgive me please. You hope you might
get off by using that, but know you won’t.

And stored-up memories take a toll these days,
for Mom keeps washing dishes, serving
meals all hot. And tears cried years ago
may be forgotten, but your wrists are not.

Twelve eager rows of cars sat waiting while
an ooze of Christmas shoppers flowed across
their street beneath a signal giving right
of way but flashing now to hurry up.
She was behind them all and all behind

in general so it seemed to me who noticed
from the curb her death-like grip on tops
of bags that billowed out around her. And
like a sniper laid in wait frustration
watched until she got positioned in

the center of that busy place then let
the bottom of a bag break loose despite
her solid grip around its neck and someone’s
crockpot hit the street. She’d bought it
for the fact its liner came right out

and so it did and broke in shattered pieces
all across that space just as the light
above said go to cars who soon began
to honk because their go was now held up
by one poor shopper all alone in picking

up the bags her panic had turned loose
and all that glass. I watched her face change
through phases like the signal light above
embarrassed first and looking round as if
to make amends to honking cars who sought

a cop or someone anything to get her
out of there. Then pain appeared which dollars
wasted played some part I thought and changed
again and hung this time. A weary look I saw and
felt but soon away from there I then forgot.

Here in this valley grown with weeds, that hill
above us looking down, I see a mill

and feel its creak and smell the fresh-ground flow
that cooking made so sweet. And here I know

that echoes of a father’s past crowd in.
The old man’s memory hears it now as then.

Run quick and fetch a doctor round the hill
and mend the sudden damage of that mill

that chopped with cane the fingers stuck into
it by this boy. My thoughts on looking flew

past all those years I stared at its misshape
and though but little of a hand’s escape

through surgery done by gathered lanterns low
to serve my Dad these many years till now.

He pointed with it then. He showed the spot
where he and brother George next day took what

was left, two fingers dead, and with some care
dug in the earth and placed them wondering there.

A curious grave we’d come to see.
We went away, and left it be.                 

David H. Briggs

Because he had lost the index and middle fingers of his right hand, my father always shook hands left-handed. The mill that took his fingers ground sugar cane to make sorghum molasses. It was powered by a walking mule but had to have cane fed into it by hand.  The boyhood home site where this incident occurred was near Brush Creek, North Carolina.  Brush Creek is located near Asheville and today claims a population of 500. My father left Brush Creek to cross the mountains and attend Maryville College in East Tennessee.  After earning his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, he returned to teach at Maryville College for most of his life. When we visited my father’s home site, nothing remained of the original buildings, but my father still claimed that he knew the location of his buried fingers “within ten feet.”

The following took place in Ooltewah, Tennessee.  It is one of those stories that has never left me, although it took place sometime in the late 1960’s. …

A Child In the ClosetRead More »