DESCENSION was published in the Asheville Poetry Review in 1997, and also appeared on George Scarbrough’s reading tape, Ice Storm and Other Poems Read by the Poet, George Scarbrough (Iris Audio Publications, 1997.)
How rise to this
Out of unspoken pasts:
Spin-off of vulgar verb
Muttered in cowshed,
Reiterated at sty:
How come by way
Of bailiffed plot
And eyed stone,
Quern of circumstance,
Princely poll
Of tolling neighbor,
To the desmene
Of "sculpted prose"?
What fair vowel,
Dark consonant,
Was wakened when
By bright dams
Fish hung quivering
Like needles feeling
North to language,
The good word?
Serf banished,
Manumitted to
Learned accounts
Of tithe and harvest,
Collar and armband,
Dainty acceptance
Of these round O's
So cleanly spoken,
Ceaselessly winnowing
One mulls back by whit
And oddment,
Exacting toll
Of scrapped bill, journey-
Man list, landlord scroll,
To faint dark forms
Subsumed against
A flowering wall
When between black
Stubble and frost,
Litany and freakish
Speech, the wedding
Was performed
For his oafish kin.
© George Scarbrough, 1997.
George Scarbrough comments: "My ancestors on both sides of the family were not bookish, not always educated, often illiterate. One grandfather was educated, however, my mother’s father, Jospeh Leander McDowell. Teacher, preacher, and medical doctor, he may have infected me with the gift of gab. However it was, I was the "talking bird"—the writer in my family. Some have remarked that I am a good writer, albeit hardly a writer of "sculpted prose," as one critic said of my novel, A Summer Ago. This poem is the result of my trying to solve the linguistic puzzle my family presents."