Northeastern State University

Department of Languages and Literature

Poetry Published

A selection of  Published Poetry

1982-1997

 

Johnny’s Woodpile

 

Two trees hold

The man-stacked wood.

Pale circles from where I sit

Say “night logs that have yet to season”

As have the smaller middle logs

And the kindling piled up high.

Against them lean three braces

From the downhill side

To hold their neat wall steady

Against an untoward slide

Which would topple brittle brown,

Then middle longs,

And even set an odd night log–

Here and there–awry,

So that, when it was over,

The wood would be hard to handle;

Some would rot and powder up,

And some would simply lie

And go to ground.

But these braces hold

Johnny’s source for heat.

A sure watch against the wind and hill,

Two trees and the braces

Hold four winter weeks of oak coals

Against the February snow.

                                                                                                      1982

 

 

Bob White

What a Philistine I felt

To know the shape of metaphor

And scan the lines, to view

The poem as Art while all the time

In my mind I saw the poet's

Hand, the fingers curved around the pencil

As he or maybe she reached for the word

The phrase to catch as exactly as what?--

As God?  The filling up of the body from

Toes to crown on hearing and Bob White

Or seeing a cardinal bathing in a fountain

Dripping, Dripping, Dripping on a sunny day.

To say in some new way, to convey in art

Wonder, full of wonder, the filling up

Of Beauty which floats us for some space

Of time in the mind of what may be God

Or simply the song of the Bob White

As we flash into his art and are gone

To dance in the clouds as the Bob White's song.

1989

                

A Song for Two Voices and Four Worlds

 

Daughter                                 When Mother spoke

                                                 In school

                                                 She spoke

 

Mother                                    From a well,

                                                 From a hill,

                                                 From a sunny spot

 

Daughter                                 Against the wall

 

Mother                                    Saying

 

Daughter                                 Mother, I know you.

 

Mother                                    Mama, I love you.

 

Daughter                                 And my mother

                                                 Closed her eyes

                                                 To feel her mama's

 

Mother                                    Arms, the softness of her lips.

 

Daughter                                 When Mama slept

                                                 At school

                                                 She slept

 

Mother                                    In a large room

                                                 Hollow with

                                                 Home hunger,

 

Daughter                                 Echoing the stiffled

 

Mother                                    Cries

                                                 Of little girls

                                                 In the good white peoples'

                                                 Beds.

 

                                                 In the good white people's

                                                 Clothes.

Daughter                                 And she cried

 

Mother                                    In English.

 

Daughter                                 In English.

                                                 When my mama laughed

                                                 At school,

                                                 She laughed!

 

Mother                                    And for a Chuckle's time

                                                 Forgot

                                                 Her wanting

 

Both                                         Her mama.

 

Daughter                                 When my mama learned

                                                 At school,

                                                 She learned

Mother                                    To survive

 

Daughter                                 And she learned

                                                 To help me learn

                                                 And she learned

 

Mother                                    To remember.

                                                 But she learned

                                                 Hardest

                                                 Deepest

                                                 Proudest

                                                 To love.

 

Daughter                                 And she

                                                 Never forgot

 

Mother                                    Her mama.

 

Daughter                                 Who are you?

 

Mother                                    You are

                                                 Your mama's

                                                 Child.

1989

                                                

 

A Stitch in Time

 

Sky smooth skin of his ears

Is mine –

Stretching from his neck

To fine

Clear brow above his eyes –

Tucked, Notched

Beneath the lobe.  This stitch

I watched

As Grandmother God smiled

To sew

Such a child gift as you

To sew

Such a sweetness to me,

To sew

Such a terror to us!

To sew such a human to world,

To sew

Such a one to the dance.

1989

 

 

Summer 1989                                             Published 1990

 

Summer —Twenty-seven swallows

Lined up like clothespins

On the electric lines

Between the house

And old red barn —

August —

Hot, peeling tomatoes,

Apples, rubbing stained

Fingers with vinegar-

Water for February pies —

July — squash wash —

Cut, quarter, sack, tie,

Freere fresh —

Corn — shuck, silk —

Zing into steam —

Steam, steam —

June, blueberries,

Blackberries, chiggers —

Chig, chig, chiggers —

Sweet grass by starlight,

Milky-way,

Big dipper —

Haze —

Hot red peppers

Catfish

Summer.

Summer.

Summer.

 

 

Now I’m Cooking                             1990

 

I’ve learned to cook.

It took me thirty years.

The first four I spent eating

And spattering the stuff about.

But I remember (as a picture in

A Rockwell print) standing by

My grandmother while she sat confined to her chair but,

Still, teaching me to make gravy.

With palsied fingers she pointed out

The times to add or stir

So that I learned the amounts

And colors and shapes of

Kitchen life. The heft of a

Blue mixing bowl strains my

Small hands. Bread dough is

Satin and plastic to the fingers

When it’s ready to be left to

Its own yeasty devices.

Roux browns slowly, slowly, slowly —

Requiring an odd scrape here and there —

Came from Eric; And one friend’s

Wisdom boiled down to

“Never put bananas in the refrigerator.”

Some of us don’t want to cook

But want to poke,

And Joel says he likes to cook with me

Because that’s where the action is.

Hotspur thought killing hungry work,

Napoleon gets chicken marengo after the battle.

Somehow I know that Grandma Moon’s heaving

The custard out the back door when told

“It’s almost as good as my first wife’s”

Was an action noble in deed

And worthy of heritage.

And I know that a tasty brew

Is better than bitter.