Clare Banks: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

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Playing in the Pastoral Dream

 

My neighbor spent the summer destroying

his yard. Lopping the tops of his trees,

and razing the ground until it was no more

than dirt, the roots of vines ascending

 

like wire. I was on the sidewalk

watching my kids ride bikes when his wife

came onto their porch in a bathrobe.

Her head behind the screen was pale and bald

 

from what could only be chemo.

My body seized at the sight of her,

and I thought of my sister last winter

in her wig. It’s no use, I wanted

 

to tell him. There’s no construction,

no revision that will stop this.

In the street it was dusk: I knew about death

and I didn’t. It hardly mattered.

 

The red brush of a cardinal darted

across my yard in the evening’s odd coolness,

moving to her nest in the hedgerow.

Sycamores lining the street shed bark

 

like snakes in wide strokes, leaving their trunks

a pale green. Inside my pastoral dream,

the white noise of cicadas rises

around my son playing in the grass.

 

The street lies awash in golden light

like that of endless spring. And my daughter,

at the end of the block, she’s a deer

wandering the trees, she’s in and out of sight.

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Clare Banks is the author of Notes on Endings, forthcoming from Terrapin Books, and associate editor for Smartish Pace. A recipient of two Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Awards, her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Iron Horse, Boulevard, Poet Lore, and Mississippi Review, among others. She was nominated for the Best New Poets 2023 anthology by Mississippi Review, was a 2023 finalist in Radar Poetry's Coniston Prize and a 2024 finalist in Iron Horse Literary Review's National Poetry Month Prize. She has an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland and lives in Baltimore City where she co-hosts The HOT L Poets Series.

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                                                                                          Vincent van Gogh, The Road Menders, 1889.       
                                                             

 

Comments

[Robert Sward]

Terrific final quatrain among several fine ones. To write what one sees communicates what one feels. Love the van Gogh accompaniment and sheez! Clare Banks looks to be about ten years old!

[Sr. Leslie]

This is just gorgeous!…Pain death and a flash of red hope…”I knew about death/and I didn’t. It hardly mattered.”…A keeper and one to keep handy as Holy Week approaches…Thank you Terence and thank you Clare…I am at the Cathedral and service about to begin…a beautiful poem to carry with me through out…

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Leslie. Have a great day.

[Bernard Welt]

Clare! Nature has a lot to answer for. People try so hard.

[Grace Cavalieri]

She had me at 'the red brush of a cardinal.'

[lally]

yes, yes to it all

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

"Playing in the Pastoral Dream" comprises seven quatrains, with the first line and last line end-rhyming in the opening quatrain and in the closing quatrain. The intervening quatrains do not rhyme in keeping with the neighbor's upending of his yard to change what he can, while what he can't change is the impending death of his wife who watches him. The first-person narrator of the poem recalls her sister "in a wig" and silently confesses "It's no use ... There's no construction, / no revision that will stop this." Though death haunted, the poem notes "a cardinal darted / across my yard," "Sycamores lining the street shed bark," and "the white noise of cicadas rises." They affirm the quotidian: life goes on, including her "son playing in the grass" and her daughter behaving like "a deer / wandering the trees." Even though a kind of busywork won't work against an inevitable, unwanted outcome, the distraction alone can offer its own anodyne, however temporary. Brava, Clare Banks, for this exceptional poem. And bravo, Terence, for selecting it. (Great photo too.)

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Earle, for the excellent exegesis.

[Eileen Reich]

I love this beautiful poem.

[Don Berger]

My goodness what a recounting. Reading this poem just now kind of took over my life, magically became what was happening, front and center. I could imagine all of it, feel what was there, its mix of beauty, richness, woe, wisdom, intensity, grace--and peace in the end. I could have continued scrolling down for a much longer time, to hear what else else this poet might say to us. One time a teacher suggested I start writing narrative poems, which in stops and starts I have tried, and now at this moment maybe I'll start up that effort again, full throttle, beginning with some rereadings of this poem, and then set off on writing my own, fortunate to have taken in these words today. What a teller you are Clare Banks! And Terence, what a pick of this week or any!

[Terence Winch]

Don: thanks for that great response.

[Clarinda]

Love the poem and the exigesis too! I’ve long admired Clare banks’ poetry btw

[Jack Ridl]

Yes and yes. All the incongruities of suffering.
Thank you for helping us to feel less alone.

[Nita Conley Korn]

Big yes to this poem and to the comments above.

[susan Campbell]

What a wonderful poem!