Welcome to where I am, where my kitchen's always messy, a pot's (or a poet) always about to boil over, a dog is always begging to be fed. Drafts of poems on the counter. Windows filled with leaves. Wind. Clouds moving over the mountains. If you like poetry, books, and music--especially dog howls when a siren unwinds down the hill-- you'll like it here.


MY NEW AUTHOR'S SITE, KATHRYNSTRIPLINGBYER.COM, THAT I MYSELF SET UP THROUGH WEEBLY.COM, IS NOW UP. I HAD FUN CREATING THIS SITE AND WOULD RECOMMEND WEEBLY.COM TO ANYONE INTERESTED IN SETTING UP A WEBSITE. I INVITE YOU TO VISIT MY NEW SITE TO KEEP UP WITH EVENTS RELATED TO MY NEW BOOK.


MY NC POET LAUREATE BLOG, MY LAUREATE'S LASSO, WILL REMAIN UP AS AN ARCHIVE OF NC POETS, GRADES K-INFINITY! I INVITE YOU TO VISIT WHEN YOU FEEL THE NEED TO READ SOME GOOD POEMS.

VISIT MY NEW BLOG, MOUNTAIN WOMAN, WHERE YOU WILL FIND UPDATES ON WHAT'S HAPPENING IN MY KITCHEN, IN THE ENVIRONMENT, IN MY IMAGINATION, IN MY GARDEN, AND AMONG MY MOUNTAIN WOMEN FRIENDS.




Tuesday, September 27, 2011

LONG BLACK VEIL

from MAGPIE TALES
  


Long Black Veil

                             “She walks these hills in a long black veil,
                               visits my grave while the night winds wail...”


She could never herself weep
above any man’s grave for so many 
bad nights,  unmindful of hailstones  
and wind wailings.  Where’s the woman

who would? Still, she wonders who
wrote this song, who set it roaming.  
She’s glad to be done with her own 
bad nights drawing her out

where the  wind can whip
even the slightest of lacy threads
wild at the edge of a shawl.  She 
had thought it was flesh to flesh

she wanted, long as the nights lasted.
That was before she pulled back
from the heat of him seeking her own
and saw limbs thrashing outside 

like nothing that she could recall
ever hearing a woman sing.
No wailing romance in that vision,
only the locust leaves hammered

by lightning to quicksilver
tongue-shapes that silenced her.
How dare a woman walk out
into such revelation, much less

set it throbbing to music 
that’s even now winding its song round her, 
length after length of it, her hand
reaching out for the door handle?


Thursday, September 15, 2011

BASIL

When I was a young thing, wanting to be a poet (why would I?  who would care?  who reads poetry anyway?) I met Gibbons Ruark.  I was a student at UNC-Greensboro and he took an interest in my work.  He and his wife Kay had two adorable little girls.   He wrote poetry about his family, his place,  his lost father.  Later he and his wife lived in Italy, thanks to a grant from which foundation I can't remember.   This poem from that time is one of my favorites.


We think of basil as Italian, but it orginated in India, as did so many of our herbs and spices.  Maybe basil is how Krishna seduced the gopis?  No matter.   Basil is definitely an erotic presence in this poem.


BASIL


There in Fiesole it was always fresh
In the laneway where the spry grandfather
Tipped you his smile in the earliest wash
Of sunlight, piling strawberries high and higher
In a fragile pyramid of edible air.
Light down the years, the same sun rinses your dark
Hair over and over with brightness where
You kneel to stir the earth among thyme and chard,
Rosemary and the gathering of mints,
The rough leaf picked for tea this summer noon,
The smooth one saved for pesto in the winter,
For the cold will come, though you turn to me soon,
Your eyes going serious green from hazel,
Your quick hand on my face the scent of basil.



----Gibbons Ruark


Oh, but I am not in Italy.   I am here at home in the Appalachian mountains, picking the last of our basil, having neglected it during weeks of worry about a parent's illness.  My hand are laved with the scent of basil.  The scent floats through the kitchen, the living room.  I rub my nose with it.  I rub it in my hair.   I would make ink from it and write my own poem with the scent of basil.