THREE POEMS BY BRENDA KAY LEDFORD
from Sacred Fire
Sacred Fire
Monday morning hiking
the river cane path,
home of the Cherokee.
A monarch butterfly cutting
through denim blue skies,
lilac asters caress
the banks of Brasstown Creek.
A parchment leaf floats
on bubbles, blackberry brambles
ramble along the trail.
A poplar lifts golden palms,
goldenrods pulse in a chilled breeze.
Walnuts plop crusty shells
to the ground, and a maple
burns likesacred fire.
REMOVAL
Arrested dragged from homes,
driven at bayonet point into
stockades in a chilling rain.
Cherokees loaded like cattle
drven toward the West.
Bugle sounded, wagons rolled
and children moaned good-bye
to their mountain homes.
Snowstorms, fateful journey
over the Trail of Tears.
Twenty-one Cherokees ascending
the upper world in one night.
Victims of hunger, thinly clad,
sleeping on ground without fire.
Blinding sleet, Native Americans
herded toward th black-painted sun.
SPIRITS
Joe-Pye weed,
Floral bouquet of fall.
Oak leaves,
braves pulsing in the wind.
Voices of the past,
I draw living waters.
Dogwoods,
embers on the pond.
A wedge of geese
honking over Brasstown.
Faded drum beats,
fog ascends to the upper world.
Her writing has appeared in Pembroke Magazine, Asheville Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Cappers, Appalachian Heritage Magazine, and Our State. She is a long time member of N.C.W.N., NC Poetry Society, Byron Herbert Reece Society, Georgia State Poetry Society, Tennessee Mountain Writers' Club and is listed with A Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers.
READ WHAT Maureen Ryan Griffin says ABOUT THE POEMS OF BRENDA KAY LEDFORD:
A lovely "offering" indeed is Brenda Kay Ledford's Sacred Fire, a homage to her Cherokee Indian grandmother, her Scots-Irish ancestors, and the Appalachian Mountains she calls home.
This collection details a mountain heritage from Shewbird Mountain to Hyatt Mill Creek, where "apple blossoms wash the hills" and an eagle casts its shadow over/arrowheads buried in the soil." These lines from "Tracks" exemplify both Ledford's love for this land and her appreciation of the dark underside these mountains have witnessed, as in her poem,"Removal," in which she unflinchingly describes The Trail of Tears, Cherokee "driven at bayonet point into/ stockades in achilling rain and in "Buried Memories," which notes ruins of mining town, sharecropping, and "timber stripped from bleeding hillsides." Dispite the pain and desolation present in this patchwork of Appalachian moments, Sacred Fire is in the end an uplifting book, filled with beautiful images lovingly rendered. --Maureen Ryan Griffin, award-winning poet, author, writing coach and public radio commentator in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Brenda Kay Ledford www.blueridgepoet.blogspot.com
