Transcript

I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

This summer, I purchased loppers and a chainsaw. Overgrown branches blocked my view of mountain ridges across the valley, enough for me to take action. After grabbing a box from the top shelf, a worker at my village hardware store said, “Aren’t you the poet?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Umm . . . be careful.”

My wife thought I’d lost my mind, accused me of believing I can do anything. I told her I could never play the violin — but trimming a few limbs of a maple tree? Easy peasy. Her real concern was my safety. So, I spent the morning reading safety instructions.

Then I donned my flannel shirt from Lawson’s Brewery, boots, gloves, protective goggles and went to work. I have to admit, I loved the rev of the powertool in my hands. Something surged through my arms; I felt . . . rugged. Watching the limbs topple wasn’t enough. The buzz got to my head. I became addicted and searched the yard for saplings, small trees, old logs. I rarely tap into this space of my manhood; I’ve never felt brawny reading books, but this? I wanted to see myself in this light of masculinity. I called to Didi. She stepped out onto the deck. Her face had the look of someone who has stumbled upon roadkill, lots of roadkill. Half the yard was mangled and there I was, buzzing tool in my hands, snarling with power saying “Take a picture.”

Today’s poem takes up the myth of Narcissus, the nymph who falls in love with his own image.

Narcissus and the Namesake River
by Reginald Shepherd

It was a lie they told about Narcissus, a libel 
on his name. He never loved himself, not anyone
who looked like him. Narcissus didn’t know 
his own profile. There were no mirrors 
in those eras, just helpless echoes. He fell for 
what he wanted to fall through, a man he’d never

be: that’s desire, the long arm of the father’s law
taxing taxonomies, order and phylum and genus and class
uprooting upstart weeds. (Weeds are just flowers before family 
names, a kingdom yet to come. Narcissus never knew his
father either, never talked back, or could have doubled back
home. He planted himself unspecific on the bank.) That woman

lip-synching without a face was no help. He couldn’t help but drown 
in the cold swift overflow called you: the mainstream, not 
a tributary, unruly spring displacing every basin or 
floodplain. The other is a lack; the self, delusion; 
and you’ve got to lose yourself to be found
wanting. He wasn't suffering from self-delusion, just a mistake called

identity. Narcissus would do anything to please, so 
when that face half-hidden in the current (was it running
away to sea, like a sailor?) said Kiss me, or don’t come around here
anymore, he did. The perfect kiss, of course, was death,
but who needs to fall twice? And the flower?
It only wants to be picked, cut and placed in cool still water.

"Narcissus and the Namesake River" from THE SELECTED SHEPHERD by Reginald Shepherd © 2024. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.