August 2024
Bio Note: I have been writing since retiring from the classroom about six years ago, finding a lot of material for my poems from memories of family and from common, everyday objects and observations, full of beauty and surprise. My second collection of poetry, Come Before Winter, was published in April, 2024 (Kelsay).
To the Unexpected
Here’s to the unexpected, the surprises
that come our way—the Christmas card
that arrives on the Ides of March, the rain
burst on a sky-blue summer day, a poem
that births itself in minutes at the coffee shop.
Here’s to the unexpected— the music
of blackbirds ribboning in the heavens,
controlled and chaotic like Stravinsky’s Rite
of Spring; the beauty in a mound of soft butter,
alluring, sensual, evoking images of warm,
freshly-baked bread smeared in creamy delight;
and truth birthed from questions like those
of the brooding and unless-I-see Thomas
after the resurrection of his friend.
Here’s to this one fleeting life, its magic,
its commonplace, its mundane, its divine,
its brief hours, so unexpected, the light waning,
to our surprise.
Our Legendary Father
—after Joyce Sutphen and Thomas Lux
Because he got twice the money and his name in the paper,
he would pick two hundred pounds of cotton per day to have
the first bale ginned in the county. Because years later
he would pass a field of white and say, I’d like to get out there
in that. Because he was good the old way. Because he was
a horse whisperer, gifted at taming wild horses. Once he bought
two paints when the train came through town, and then wrestled
them home, tussling with them through the pines, grappling
with them in ditches—at times, bottom upwards—at last gaining
their trust and earning their support to make his corn and cotton
crops that year. Because he could plow a straight row by using
the mules’ ears as a compass. Because he worked too hard.
Because he was a pig farmer, good at picking out a good frame
at the hog sale. Because he could sing one verse of one song,
Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? Because he could
give a good haircut to the little one pitching a fit under his scissors.
Because he doctored his feverous children with Vicks Salve and
Mentholatum, encouraged their health with a little sody water and
Coker Colers. Because he was always broke. Because he took pride
in mending his fences, perturbed when he saw his teenage son
sloppying up the job. Because he wanted pretty bundles of kindling
for Mama’s cooking, bundles stacked neatly like his worry. Because
he was known for the best coon dog in the county. Because he would
cut a cotton stalk to use on a recalcitrant child. Because he used it.
Because he sacrificed, considered himself the least among the brethren—
if he went hunting with you, he gave you the best birds and kept
the mangled, shot-up ones for himself. Because he had a thing for food,
wanted bread, meat and grease on his table in and out of season. Because
he rode in an airplane only once in his life. Because he was good
the old way.
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