September 2024
Bio Note: I am a maker of songs, poems and drum circles who writes some of those songs on a mountain in North Carolina and a co-founder of the Poet & Song Series with my trio, Raison D’Etre. Underscore and Deep Ends are my two full-length poetry collections.
After Boots and the Princess Have Been Married a Long Time
—a sequel to a fairy tale from Norway
My backbone won’t snap
like your fingers.
My backbone will sway
the way crowded saplings
sprout into maple
covens.
My backbone will dance
in a circle of bowed heads,
tumble leaves to ground
like Rapunzel’s
golden stair.
I fancy how to cobble my backbone
from yonder sea foam, vow never
to cut a sorry figure who stumbles
and mumbles away empty
from brew vats, bound
to serve, bound
to wife.
Now that’s a story—
a wife romps under
the Blood Moon, drains
her ale cup, tips the barkeep,
then whistles her way home
alone along dark paths.
There in the clearing,
her bright hovel waits,
tree lit by window,
husband at door.
Documentation
Lined up next to the livery,
a chorus line of beer wagons
set to deliver the first Wiedemann’s Fine
after Prohibition.
My grandpa, Clifford Stephens,
remembered this event as historical,
told me he delivered the first
barrel on that momentous day.
All I could call up for image
was his barrel chest,
his suspendered work pants
tugged way past his natural waist,
glasses fogged with pride when
my sister and I played “Tom Dooley” after supper,
his scraped elbows wrapped in plastic,
deepening the infection that landed him
on his back, small and silent, at Speers Hospital.
His half-German warbling Ach de lieber
as he poured me a juice glass
of bohemian lager.
Not one of us thought beer was anything
but nourishing liquid bread.
One day I googled first beer
after Prohibition in Northern Kentucky
to find black and white witness
for my grandpa’s claim to fame:
4th wagon from the left, a driver in suspenders,
horses ready, gold rims sliding down his nose.
I Visit Your Grave
in this solace you guided me toward
after other adventures on switchbacks
through mountains. We laughed
about how wrong Mapquest
got it. State park hosts gaped
at our dangerous route.
No one takes that
road!
And now, after turns we could not
have guessed, you are buried
here at this haven, younger
than I am, too soon.
I notice tributes
scattered over
other stones,
wonder what
I can offer.
Just this—
written on a leathery bouquet
of fallen gingko
leaves—
my poem about how you
opened arms and
heart, led me
safe into
sacred
space.
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL