{"id":360,"date":"2021-03-16T13:59:53","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T20:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=360"},"modified":"2025-02-07T11:58:31","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T19:58:31","slug":"elegy-for-a-buckeye-and-seabooted-by-j-p-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/elegy-for-a-buckeye-and-seabooted-by-j-p-white\/","title":{"rendered":"“Elegy for a Buckeye” and “Seabooted” by J. P. White"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Issue<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Found in Willow Springs 87<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to Author Profile<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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“Elegy for a Buckeye” and “Seabooted” by J. P. White<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Elegy for a Buckeye<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I went all the way back to the beginning looking for a buckeye giant<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a quiet street in Ohio but it was gone and so were the spiny,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gold brown husks containing the glossy nuts with circular eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I always kept a buckeye in my pocket for any luck but bad<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And rubbed its smooth finish hoping it would shiver me through<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father\u2019s unhappiness with selling life insurance for Metropolitan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the way home from school, I would listen to the husks cracking,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The buckeyes falling for squirrels to lug off in their gaped mouths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Food for winter? Isn\u2019t that our first and last theme? If I had one<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of those buckeyes, I could look into its varnished mahogany burl<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And see my father thumbing a buckeye like a miniature football,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then launching it for a touchdown, my grandparents in Rye Beach,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barefoot among the buckeyes for the beach and a last nude swim,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Blue Angel cousin who crashed his jet must have tendered more<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Than one in his hands and used it, like me, to steer by when he was<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grounded, and even the coalman conductor on a tight scream clock<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who I waved to every Friday from my bike might have glimpsed<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This beauty before he entered the steel mills in Toledo and Chicago,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And thought for a moment he might lean against it some day<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And read a book, everyone I knew in Ohio now seedless and distant<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the trees they planted to define them. My memory of all this<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only as old as September and young when compared to the Shawnee<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who named the tree after its nut flicking in a swale like a buck\u2019s eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are gone along with the Delaware and Miami and every other tribe<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That ever lived in Ohio where this tree once lived and laid out<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its simple feast or do I have it wrong and the eye of the giant<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I climbed and loved still sees what is happening and holds on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\nhttps:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2021\/03\/White_Elegy_for_a_buckeye_20210122_71878.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n\n\n\n

Seabooted<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I looked at my father in his last bed and saw him there seabooted<\/p>\n\n\n\n

in the cockpit, holding in his eyes how a hull slips under a wave<\/p>\n\n\n\n

without losing its push into weather. He didn\u2019t hear my offerings<\/p>\n\n\n\n

from a book he didn\u2019t believe in, so much as the flapping of cloth,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the leaning into it, the splash kick of wake boiling off the transom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like any ocean indifferent to suffering, he contained countless wrecks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On many other nights, I had gone down into his waters to survey<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the damage, salvage the proof, imagine some blood payment<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I might add to the patina, but on that night, I put aside my vanishing<\/p>\n\n\n\n

into the ink of some ancient faded ledger between us and stayed<\/p>\n\n\n\n

at the low, wet rail and we made the turn through the eye of the wind<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and together found the morning. One of us heard the ocean over the dune.<\/p>\n\n\n\nhttps:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2021\/03\/White_Seabooted_20210122_71981.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":9298,"featured_media":5,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38817,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions\/38817"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}