Rachel Landrum Crumble: Guest Poet

And an important announcement.

Wilkweed seeds dispersing by Ray Zimmerman.

I am pleased to present Rachel Landrum Crumble’s poetry in this edition of Crane’s Eye View. These poems appear in hr er upcoming book, titled In Praise of Detours,  published by Main Street Rag. The projected release is scheduled for January 2026, but a presale with a generous discount is available now.

Walking in Forest Hills Cemetery (published in Catalpa Magazine)
      “The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.” –Werner Herzog

I come to make amends
for the broken promises
I’ve made to my body,
to feel with each step the heaviness
of flesh, the lightness of spirit.

I come to keep faith
with the natural world.
On the lawn, a long stem variety
of bright yellow dandelions
lights up the tombstones
like birthday candles.
Mammoth magnolias bloom
with white flowers big as baby heads.
I see the fox, the coyote
like shadows moving under cloud cover
in my peripheral vision.

I come to lay mimosa and honeysuckle
on the headstone of all my far-flung griefs:
my college roommate, gone
from cancer last month in Maine.
My sister, cousin, and friend
taken by cancer in their 40’s.
Neighbors, church members buried here.  
My mother’s ashes buried in a pink
marble urn, too far to visit.
My father’s, scattered along the beach
three Junes ago.

Here I read dates and names, histories
hazarded before my birth. Here I remember,
since I take nothing for the journey,
I will lay it all down again. Here, I remember
I am a descendant of Vikings, horse thieves,
slave holders and Quaker Abolitionists.
My great-great grandmother, the reluctant
boss of Lukens Steel,
my grandfathers: a Colorado cattleman,
and a pioneer missionary to Iran.
Like them, like these, winter bulbs
planted hopefully in family gardens,
I await a new season—
recalling my journey
to a kingdom
not made with hands.


After the 2016 Election (published in The BeZine)
 
We share this common irritant: the smoke of distant fires.
It scalded the morning and evening sun
ember red, then hung a net of haze over the city.
After two days, friends are confined indoors, wheezing.
My throat is raw, sinuses ache.
Now dark clouds rise from the mountain.
 
The day after the election, police in Alton Park
stop black residents up and down the Boulevard,
as if it is Apartheid, or a new Jim Crow.
 
My son is driving, stopped in traffic, radio blaring.
A cop on a motorcycle passes, hangs a U, comes back,
tickets him for going 50 in a 35-mile zone.
“Yes sir,” is the drill we instilled
when we had The Talk all parents have
with their sons of color.
 
Five miles over the state line in Georgia,
a white boy walks the high school parking lot,
a Confederate flag tied at his neck like a cape.
Later, black students yank it from his backpack,
stomp on it, igniting threats of a race war.
 
My eyes are burning. Smoke threads through
the indoors air in the gym and large commons.
We choke from the fire of distant words. 
Not again.


First Quarter Earnings (Published in Detour Ahead)
 
I. Prologue December 2019: Illusion of Control
Hurtling 70 miles an hour
away from the longest night of the year,
we are still in the driver’s seat.
 
Even our president
can’t orchestrate this virus,
though ignorance and fear
spread faster.
 
II. January 2020
In the face of human suffering in China
the Stock Market is a distant star.
 
III. February
On my way to work,
late winter trees hold
the gauzy promise of Spring.
 
IV. March
Without foreseeable egress,
we take our shoes off and wait.
We pace, we distance, we breathe
into a paper bag. We stay up late,
rising later than the sun.
 
Daily life elongates, like banished
winter shadows.
 
Some moments ripen
like D'Anjou pears,
lovingly wrapped in newspaper
and placed on a February shelf.
We gather at the table.
 
While commerce sits in a sock drawer,
outdoors, Creation continues
its timeless canticle of Spring.


Lessons on Loss in January (Published in Lothlorein Poetry Journal)

An arthritic oak
wears a tattered skirt
of last year’s leaves.
Sometimes old grief is ugly and vain.

Two century old yellow maples
grew up together so close
they fused above the roots.
Now one remains, strong and wounded
a bald spot at the base
where lightning blew them apart,
felling the other.
We survive loss.

A row of red cedars, branches
touching like children’s clasped hands
playing Red Rover, is a strong shelter
against cruel wind.
Hold hands, and bend.

Yet merciful wind strips high branches
on poplar trees even of loss.
How can Spring’s yellow-green buds appear
without winter blasts that pry those last
dead leaves loose?

Their dark beauty against a changing
palette of sky is its own stark victory.
Let go.

In January, nocturnal roots
hold fast to the earth in freeze
and thaw, secretly incubating Spring.
Trust the unseen.

Deciduous trees, like aging starlets,
die from the inside out.
Conifers die from the outside in.
Leave me my heartwood.
I am evergreen.

Rachel is an active member of the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild and the Northwest Georgia Writers. If you can’t wait to read more of her poetry after reading these sample poems, her current book, Sister Sorrow, is available from Finishing Line Press.

I am also pleased to announce that my book, It’s Just a Phase, is still available from Walnut Street Publishing. I also have a microfiction piece in volume 4 of their anthology, The Walnut Branch.