TWO POEMS BY KATHRYN STRIPLING BYER

EASTER MORNING ON THE HAIRPIN CURVE

SMOKY MOUNTAINS

Water or phacelia tumbles

down the banks,

overflowing its rocky

creel, water

or trillium,

merging this morning

in one brim-

ful fragrant

resounding of

yes, She lives,

does the Earth

our long suffering

handmaiden raising

up dipper

by dipper the day

for us out of

her dark womb.

          

         

LAST LIGHT

The tests I need to pass are prescribed by the spirits of

place who understand travel but not amnesia. 

       

         -Adrienne Rich, This Is My First and Last Address to You

    1.

Almost the age when memory falters,

I fear being made to count backward

by sevens to answer date, year, and

Presidents, as if those numbers and names

matter more in the end than this place

where I stand at the same kitchen window,

observing the same pines set swaying by wind,

reaching upward as I’ll reach, come morning,

my arms to the ceiling, breathing the dark out

of body and spirit, exhaling that old dream

of nothingness: laying my head down to sleep.

    2.

Now Rocky Face Ridge catches fire

in the last light and, though I can’t hear it

from where I stand, Cullowhee Creek tumbles into

the Tuckaseegee, always unscrolling beneath me

the names I already know. Snowbird.

Buzzard Roost. Weyahutta. Oconaluftee.

 

    3.

I don’t know how long names can last

if there’s no one to care where they live.

What I saw on the hairpin curve down from

the Chimney Tops, white as snow, I’ve not forgotten.

Phacelia. And how on the trail leading

up to the summit of Suncota Ridge,

I saw sauntering toward me a young woman

I could have sworn was the reincarnation of

every spring wildflower ever named anywhere.

    4.

Closer she comes to me each April,

as if she means more than I have a lifetime

to know. Roundabout her, her white Easter dress

whispers every thing I want to keep living

here in this valley that cups the last swallow of light,

every name I must reach to remember or else

lose them, hillside by hillside, to darkness.

These poems by Kathryn Stripling Byer were first 

published in Kakalak and  Hearthstone and were reprinted in

ECHOES ACROSS THE BLUE RIDGE (2010)

Do you want Kathryn Stripling Byer's newest poetry collection?

SOUTHERN FICTIONS -  NOW AT JACAR PRESS