The Pages — Blackbird Archive

← v11n2, Fall 2012

It is a picture-book of the fauna to be found

in the New World with a sketch of a possum

on the frontispiece that his mother loved

as a child. Her first book, and then his—

the bobcat and alligator moving through

the pages lodged in his mind like creatures

arriving in Eden on the first morning—

materialized from nothing, like the first

signs, like handprints on the cavern wall,

like torchlight a thousand years after

the invention of fire. A porcupine spears

a mountain lion on page 59.

This prized possession nearly disappeared

in his hands from love and usage and now

remains shelved somehow in the Library

of Congress call number 915.316. It was

checked out by Carl Sandburg twice in 1925.

On page 7 a grizzly bear sticks its face

childhood history memory

Steve Scafidi

Steve Scafidi is the author of Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), For Love of Common Words (Louisiana State University, 2006), The Cabinetmaker’s Window (Louisiana State University, 2014), To the Bramble and the Briar (University of Arkansas Press, 2014) and a chapbook, Songs for the Carry-On (Q Avenue Press, 2013). He has won the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the James Boatwright Prize, and the Miller Williams Prize. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and he has taught at several universities including, most recently, in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.