Charles Swanson's "After the Garden: Selected Responses to the Psalms"

When my mother was dying, I spent a lot of time in the hospice with her. She had had a stroke, and she couldn’t talk or move. The doctor didn’t even think she could hear me or understand what was happening to her. It was quiet and lonely and sad there with her in her room. Sitting near her, I sometimes talked to her, and sometimes I read the bible.



There was a copy in the waiting room, and I had carried it back to my mom’s room. I’m not religious, but I found myself reading the bible, especially the psalms.

I had always loved their poetry, ever since I studied them in a Colonial American Lit class in college. I’m not the kind of person who likes to memorize poetry or much of anything else, but I sat down as a student and memorized some of the psalms.

Reading those poems of love and grief, sadness and light, I sat near my dying mother and thought about how much truth and longing there was in them. I said to myself that maybe someday I would try writing poems about the psalms, try to write something that would carry something of what I found in them.

After my mom died, I did try to write those poems. Over and over and over again I tried, but I couldn’t do it. I don’t know why, but they didn’t come for me.

But they did come for Charles Swanson, a fine poet I met here in Virginia. He lives about thirty miles north of Danville and teaches high school in Gretna. He also pastors the Melville Avenue Baptist Church in Danville.

Charles has written a series of poems that respond to the psalms, and those poems are now included in his first book, After the Garden: Selected Responses to the Psalms.

The poems in this book take us back to the true roots of poetry, to its source in prayer, music, and the lives of ordinary people who struggle to make sure that the ones who come after them are able to live lives of freedom, hope, and faith. In these beautifully-shaped poems about growing up and living in the Virginia Piedmont and Appalachia, Swanson turns ordinary lives into extraordinary prayers.

Here’s the title poems from his book:

After the Garden: What Does It Mean, the Killing Fields?

For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
Psalm 51:3, RSV

Now this is the truth:
If there is sin, sin beyond
the thorns and the sweat of the brow, then
I have eaten.

We ran through the swamp woodlands,
blasting hummocks of litter like puffballs,
the bunny zagging through patches of light,
my mother with the twenty gauge,
I with a mouthful of marbles,
hard questions that choked me.
She shot a log from under his leap—
mossy wood showering green fireworks,
the somersaulting figure
an acrobat landing on his feet.
He slipped the skin of earth,
in the hollow trunk of a tree.
Putting aside the gun,
she reached a long arm up to armpit
into the mystery of darkness
to grasp his warm hind foot,
pads like buttercups, smooth as wax.
He came out lank, sinews stretched,
long last the tender twitching ears.
We sank onto the mossy log
damaged by her errant shot
and she laid the rabbit along her lap.
Her left hand gripped his feet,
and with her right she swaddled his head
in caress or stranglehold.
The rabbit made a squeaking noise
and I choked out
one hard marble. “Mama,
what will you do?”
A practiced hand made the wrenching sound.

These are the killing fields.
Out of the milk of human kindness
I have been fed.

_________________

Charles Swanson's book is available through his publisher, Motes Books, and through Amazon.

The Motes Books site has more information about Charles and includes another poem.

This November, Finishing Line Press will be publishing his second book, a chapbook entitled Farm Life and Legend.

Hospice, August 17

When we went to the hospice today, Charlie was in another room. The nurses had moved him because he kept trying to get out of bed in his old room. The new room was right next to the nurses’ station, so they could keep track of him better. The could keep an eye on him all the time so he wouldn’t try to get up out of bed and start heading home.

But there didn’t seem much chance of that. Lying in his bed, he seemed quieter, the terminal agitation and restlessness had stopped. Charlie looked at his brother Tony and didn’t move—it was like Charlie was surprised we were there and didn’t have the words or energy to tell us what was going on.

After a minute, he said, "I had a strange experience today." And he tried to tell us about a dream that he had, but he wanted us to know that it wasn’t a dream but that it had really happened, and he wanted us to say that we believed him when he said it really happened. And I said I believed him, and I told Tony who couldn’t hear very well to say that he believed, and he looked at me with a question and then he said he believed.

The story Charlie told was confusing. It must have been some kind of half dream half waking reality that he experienced, and what made it hard for me to understand his story was that I could hear some of what he said but not other parts.

The story was about his home, and somebody trying to take his home away from him, and this person was a communist and a guitar player, and she tried to get the house from him for $99 but he fought her off. He wouldn’t sell no matter what terrible things she did to him, and he kept talking about the way she tried to get him to sell, offering more money and less money and then more money again. And during all of this pressure to sell, Charlie saw above and behind her head these messages that appeared in different colors, yellow and blue and red, and I asked him what the messages meant. He couldn’t tell us because he couldn’t read the messages but he knew that he wouldn’t sell the house for $99 or $77 no matter what she said or what terrible things she did.

And then he stopped talking and asked if I understood. I said I did. I had read in one of those hospice pamphlets that they have lying around here that you should agree with whatever the dying say, so I said I did. And the pamphlet must be right because he seemed happy that I understood. And really, I think I did understand.

Charlie then said, "Give me a hand," and I thought, Oh oh, he’s going to try to get out of bed and that’s just what he started doing -- his feet started moving to the edge of the bed and he gripped the bed rail and started pulling himself up. And I thought, the terminal agitation’s back.

Tony called the nurse, and she came in, and I thought she would try to put Charlie push back into the bed but she didn’t. She helped him out of the bed; she helped him get his feet in his red socks on the floor – and when she had him standing, she held his arms while he took a step and then another toward the bathroom. It was a miracle.

I had to get out of the room – it was too much, and I went into the lobby and sat down. Five minutes later, Tony wheeled his brother out of the room in a wheel chair. They took a spin around the room and went into the dining area and Charlie sat looking out the window toward Pembroke Ave and the north side of Fort Lauderdale.

The gigantic white and blue clouds lifted off the horizon and rose to the rich blue at the top of the sky. It was the kind of day that probably set kids dreaming about visiting Tahiti or Fuji or the islands Herman Melville visited as a boy when the 19th century was still a kid and people traveled across oceans on sailing ships that were like clouds anchored to clean-planed oak planks.

After a while he said he was tired, and Tony wheeled him back into his room, and he and I helped Charlie get out of the chair and into the bed.

As soon as he laid his head down on the white pillow he fell asleep.

Terminal Agitation, The Hospice, August 14

When Linda told me that the nurse said Uncle Charlie was terminally agitated, I thought she was joking. It reminded me of old washing machines with their agitators and the talk of communist agitators during the 60s and what the old Italians call giving someone "agita." Agitation seemed like such a funny and soft word to describe anything to do with death and the hard facts of dying.

But the nurse said she wasn’t joking and after Linda got off the phone with her, we googled "terminal agitation" and there it was, on a page dealing with hospices.

Here’s what we read:

What is Terminal Restlessness or Agitation?

Those who work with the dying know this type of restlessness or agitation almost immediately. However, the public and patient's family may have no idea what is going on and often become quite alarmed at their loved one's condition. What does it look like? Although it varies somewhat in each patient, there are common themes that are seen over and over again.

Patients may be too weak to walk or stand, but they insist on getting up from the bed to the chair, or from the chair back to the bed. Whatever position they are in, they complain they are not comfortable and demand to change positions, even if pain is well managed. They may yell out using uncharacteristic language, sometimes angrily accusing others around them. They appear extremely agitated and may not be objective about their own condition. They may be hallucinating, having psychotic episodes and be totally "out of control." At these times, the patient's safety is seriously threatened.

Some patients may demand to go to the hospital emergency room, even though there is nothing that can be done for them there. Some patients may insist that the police be called ... that someone unseen is trying to harm them. Some patients may not recognize those around them, confusing them with other people. They may act as if they were living in the past, confronting an old enemy.

I got that from the Hospice Patients Alliance. Here’s there link:

http://www.hospicepatients.org/terminal-agitation.html

But that didn’t come near describing what Charlie was going through.

He wanted so bad to get out of bed and stand up and walk out of the hospital that no word from Tony or the Nurses or the doctor could turn him aside. Charlie wanted to be on his feet and moving toward the door, and more than that. He wanted to walk out the door to the elevator and take the elevator downstairs and then walk into the parking lot and get into his candy-apple red 98 Mercury Sable and drive away from this hospice like a man being chased by the devil.

But he wasn’t going anywhere, even though he moved his feet toward the foot of the bed and he tried to grab the bed rails with his hands and pull himself up. He tried that over and over. You’d put his feet under the sheets, and he would try to lift his shoulders up off the bed. You’d tell him that he couldn’t lift himself up, and he’d try moving his feet toward the edge of the bed. And all the while he’d be talking about leaving the bed and getting stronger and walking out of the hospital. He’s spent days trying to get out of bed and telling us he was feeling fine and was ready to go home—even though he was down to 80 pounds and his skin and eyes were a sandy yellow color.

And when he wasn’t talking about how good he felt, he talked about people he had to call and things he needed to do, the projects he was working on and the places he needed to shop at. His mind was working overtime at time-a-half spinning through all of the unfinished business of his life. He was like a man on fire.