Judy Brackett Crowe: Flat Water

Readers learn on the title page that "Nebraska," derived from Native American sources, means "Flat Water," this collection's title. Furthermore, "The first Europeans to see the Platte and to give it its name were French explorers and trappers, who referred to the river as La Riviere Plate ("flat river").

The Platte is the main character in this collection of ruminations about days gone by in the midwestern United States. "Migration: The Gathering" describes in precise language the landscapes emblematic of the region with its opening lines: "In the cold twilight, sandhill cranes gather in cornfields along the river, / the beautiful, the beautiful river, countless flocks of ten or twenty or more, / gleaning snacks from crop stubble before lifting off and settling on sandbars / in the frigid waters of the Platte."

Some of the most striking lines in the collection end this poem:

                                      If sandhills had four legs, they'd be horses, Pegasi.
     Their lightning--silver shooting through blue, their thunder--echoes of nine
     million years of wingbeat and song across the plains.
                                                                                         Earthbound, the watchers
     are left to wait another year, admiring their beautiful, flat photographs. And
     the shallow Platte abides, still and shining.

As in the above poem, whether it's with unforgettable images or open-ended abstractions, Brackett knows how to end a poem, either by clicking it shut with a strong image, or by expanding it into the infinite. In "Flight Plan," a girl on horseback is "...wonder[ing] / if she can swing high enough, fast enough, / far enough, swim/fly out the door and dive // into the pond or the house-high haystack. / No, not the haystack--needles, errant pitchforks." In "How to Make Ice Cream," the ending invites the reader into the space of the poem with "Now, notice the fireflies, the meadow smell in the air, the cars chugging / away down the south lane, hands waving out windows, toward Monday / and work, toward forever." In "Pony Girl," notice how the poet develops and maintains the conceit of girl as pony into the final lines, and incorporates iconic imagery of the midwest.

     Pony Girl

     Never a pony on the porch on Christmas morning or on her birthday. Just
     a palm-slapping-hip gallop down the mean streets across the tracks, the early
     Burlington just past, on its track-tethered way to the mountains, the far valleys.

     Pony girl circles the outskirts of town, swishing through tall grasses
     and milkweed, past corrals, pastures, fields, past hemmed-in horses and sad-eyed
     cows to the turnaround tree, wondering if one day she'll not turn around,

     if she'll follow the Burlington echo, cantering west toward the far valleys,
     toward the setting sun, her green eyes shining, milkweed floss in her mane.

In spite of the inherent space limitations of a chapbook, its two sections ("Becoming" and "Migration") provide a definite narrative arc. Section I sets the stage by introducing us to all of those midwestern images, plopping us down "in the middle" of the midwest, e.g., in "A River Runs Under It" with opening lines: "Under this flat plain land / great plains grasslands sandhills / middle of nowhere middle of everywhere...." Later in the poem all of our senses come alive as "the great shallow Platte / wends its indifferent way / to the Missouri:"

     through cottonwoods
     coneflower
     goldenrod
     milkweed
     prairie grass--
        bluestem
        grama
        needle-and-thread

     Shocking rocks otherworldly
     the shape of horses and ships
     tipis and tables pierce the low sky
     send their rock roots deep
     into the underground river

     Creatures of rare and homely
     delight call these plains home--
     June bug and firefly
     fritillary and swallowtail
     prairie chicken
     bobcat and red fox
     eagle and owl
     hawk and hare
     gray-plumed redheaded Sandhill Crane
     gangly graceful part-time Nebraskan
     Prairie dog that dog of a squirrel
     tunnels deeper these August dog days
     Wild ox and wold horse are gone
     Creeks vanish streams trickle
     The flat river shrinks
     its shores puckering

Lest you think this poem is simply a list, read these lines aloud and you will discover the musicality possible with short, crisp, imagistic lines, capturing the midwestern speech and sensibility, as much as its values of remaining close to the land and close to family. Here are the poem's closing lines:

     [The girl] feels its pull like water in her body
     like blood in her veins
     She knows it is there as she knows
     this place is her home and
     that raspberries and lilacs
        need sun
        need water
        need her

Even though these poems are accessible, grounded in both history and geography of place, and steer clear of prosodic calisthenics, they do not presume to think or feel for their readers. There is an open-endedness in both form and content, and a longing for something not quite attained that carries through to the final poem.

     remembering is what

     sandhill cranes do,
     have done--
     thousands millions flying
     from cold north
     through middlemost latitudes
     southward & back again
     for millennia

     is what
     western monarchs do--
     their autumn-colored rabble winging
     to eucalyptus groves
     to a kind of hanging-in-air
     hibernation
     some inner lodestar telling them
     where & when

     is what
     the river does or tries to do--
     eddies crags vortexes
     & dams be damned

     is what I want to do--
     remember my way from & to
     necessary latitudes longitudes
     outer & inner landscapes
     not sure-winged like sandhill or monarch
     but meandering
     sashaying
     remembering
     like the river


Judy Brackett Crowe's stories and poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies. She has taught creative writing and English literature and composition at Sierra College. She is a member of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Born in Nebraska, she's lived in a small town in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills for many years. She is married to photographer Gene Crowe, and they have 3 children and 4 grandchildren. She believes that the right words in the right places are worth a thousand pictures, and, as other writers have said, she writes to discover what she thinks.

Flat Water (Finishing Line Press, 2019) is available for purchase at www.finishinglinepress.com