Posted by in Uncategorized What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me . . . Walt Whitman In birds: the crow, the bold pigeon, a chipping sparrow on the windowsill, Common grackles or boat-tails chatting and thieving the coast and feeders, Even gulls, laughing or otherwise, who Kate Bell says are being forcibly evicted From Brighton-Ha!-as Londoners condemn…Read more »
Posted by in Uncategorized 1 I haven’t written about this before Because I had a geas against it But I have a distant cousin Who was one of the most famous mountain Dulcimer players in the world. When I was a young man The irascible Appalachian poet Don West Separated me from my companions What are doing with…Read more »
Posted by in Uncategorized RAMBLE Of all the things I love to do The one that’s my delight It is to take a ramble On a starry night (an old ballad) I am a child of Appalachia. My family ranges from the Cherokee foothills all the way up to the high forests of Pisgah. I have written about my…Read more »
Posted by in Porch On this porch for years we had a wringer washing machine, a loud demoniac contraption that vibrated and thumped as it played our clothes. I toyed with it, but one day it ate my arm all the way to the elbow, suddenly, like a tame tiger that takes a moment to grab the child. Neighbors…Read more »
Posted by in Uncategorized At that kitchen sink in the 1960s I saw a ball of blue lightening emerge from the faucet during an electrical storm and travel across the wall while my cousin Judy screamed in the corner and we were all cast in neon silhouette . An image is frozen in my brain like a negative: the blue-tinged…Read more »
Posted by in Uncategorized My Grandmother Knew the sacred nature of her place A scrap of mountain above Cane River, on Big Creek, the blue ridge a bowl above the barns I remember holding a hand-full of her skirt to keep up, hunting creasy on a February morning our breath like the smoke of campfires air uncurling in…Read more »
Posted by in Uncategorized Reader: Let us all stand and “Welcome the Light!” Together the people say: Welcome the Light! Reader: On Solstice we hang in the balance. Like Mother Night we have been made pregnant by the Great Darkness and now we sit in vigil to birth the waxing year. If the sun agrees to return it will…Read more »
Posted by in Uncategorized 50 years ago now Truman Capote gave the best party ever The Black and White Ball was Credited, I say, with breaking the old order He invited everybody And Everybody came Moguls and novelists Divas and divines The inspiring and the almost expired Urbans and provincials in the same clutch Capote married Art and Politics…Read more »
Posted by in Uncategorized August August My father died and I went down to pick his figs Thinking to make a simple jam sweet enough to absorb grief Inside the humming tree – mid August and hot enough to make snakes mad I held a dancing communion with yellow-jackets, red wasps, midge flies, bumble-bees, hornets, cow-killers; working around the…Read more »
Posted by in Uncategorized I believe I can remember the first time my father was really angry with me. We were going to the store together. I sat in the front seat with him, on a long upholstered bench big enough for four. My habit was to slide over close enough to touch him. I might put my…Read more »
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