We are clearly presented with two books in one, both representing formidable literary craft in their retelling of jarring events.
The first half of the book is a lyric recounting of the abduction of 7 year old, Steven Strayner, simply opened 1: BOY FROM MERCED. The first poem, IF STEVEN WERE NEVER TAKEN, opens with lucid imagery of a gas station opened past its regular hours, washing dust off windshields – all seems normal in that moment, “The service clerk sponging the windshields dusty as a country road...” A mundane task that acts as a precursor to something more sinister.
A haunting comparison opens the second poem, BEYOND THE TIRE SWING AND TOY BOATS. The title evokes a glimmer of hope, when in reality, “Amongst tossed bottles,/plastic bags,/cans rusted and sparrow dead,/this hill shoulders the sky.” The poem goes on to create a visualization of an abducted child: “Cruel, my heart reminds me/that once a boy was stolen/from his home and that/no one could find him;/it whispers, you were taken too.” These lines enact a hush, a pause, a pain, an absence where children belong.
GOOD REASONS STEVIE’S LATE FOR SCHOOL, opens with the reminiscent days of children’s outdoor games played on care-free days, only Stevie is not around to enjoy Red Rover and stickball. He has been stolen from his childhood. This run through memories creates an emptiness and pain as it is realized Stevie will never get to jump in a “leaf pile. Late Fall. Baseball. Gian step. Ant Hill. Fire Drill...” Stevie’s desk at school will be empty.
The compilation that makes up the first part of this poetic volume, is stark, eerie – driven by a ghost of a little boy made to grow up too soon, a boy who fell through the cracks, MISSING, a description of the boy is drawn and is penciled in such a way that Stevie could be any young boy taken “December 4, 1972 and every day since.” A boy with shaggy hair, no scars, Fair and Freckled. His mother left, “If only she could breathe/she could fill her lungs with spring.”
As the book progresses, we are presented with 13 reasons Stevie is seven years late to school. Thirteen. A foreshadowing of something unlucky.
“I
Missing child posters
trashed.”
A boy missing becomes faceless:
“V.
We know to search for
a gunny sack in a ditch.
but not a boy at a school desk,
not a boy at recess.”
Rather, searching for a boy right under the noses of the search teams.
“IX.
He washes and rinses the boy’s mind,
leaves it blowing on the line.”
Brainwashed. A boy trained to be in obedience to his abductors. A boy relearning how to live life. Section ten through thirteen aptly creates a picture of a boy obedient to a man going unnoticed in his crimes. The boy’s voice unheard as he silently wails. The silence follows in the poem JUNIOR SCHOLASTIC, seventh stanza, “...He chokes, I miss my family, though one hears. The teacher doesn’t mean to brush him aside.” Stevie is present but invisible, screaming but silenced – contradictions overtake his existence.
The abductor, Parnell, takes his second child February 13, 1980 and introduces him as Stevie’s “new brother”, as Timmy gets a new identity in a makeshift barber’s chair. This event deeply affects Stevie as he knows too well what Timmy is in for – abuses, molestations, neglect.
Finally, Steven makes his plan to take Timmy and leave. “One Saturday when Parnell’s at work/Steven packs bologna/and hitches a ride/...carrying Timmy on his back, ‘I got you’,” Steven reiterates in this poem, “I got you.” And so he does until they safely find a policeman.
Cleary exemplifies an incredible command of narrative in crafting the account of Steven Stayner. She lyrically tells of the $30,000 given to create a TV miniseries made from Steven’s story. Cleary’s ending to tis portion of the book paints a PORTRAIT OF MISSING CHILD AS A CLOUD, “...You cannot reach him/through he seems to stir in you./And who is mute,/if you hear him whisper/and do not answer/Because the sky grieves to hold him...”
Steven, stolen and returned, literally stripped of innocence, to follow life with a struggle – a child’s demise.
The second half of this compilation delves into questions of mortality. JANE DOE and HOSPICE ROUNDS is an account of Cleary’s job in hospice. These poems illustrate death in brutality and forever. The title poem opens ominously, “Janie, Mommy, Aunty J, age unknow of Some Town.” A picture of someone who has lost identity. Jane becomes, “that girl we used to know.”
Cleary’s use of pines as a leitmotif within HOSPICE ROUNDS, SELF PORTRAIT OF HOSPICE NURSE ON THE ROAD WITH FALLEN POLE, “& downed pines trap me” adds a layered quality the narrative. Lush and lyrical, the poem, LONG POND renders the piercings of nightfall as “the stars of telescope to a living room...”
Ending in WEATHER REPORT, the last lines of the book render the entire story in a memorable tableau: “If we live long enough, we pause when the ground softens, the woodpile dampens or a sparrow’s song is close enough to touch.” As this poem wafts into its ending, one can hear the trill of the sparrow calling young Steven and the ghosts home.