MOUNTAIN WOMAN: GUEST BLOGGER: BARBARA BATES SMITH

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: GUEST BLOGGER: BARBARA BATES SMITH: When I first saw Barbara Bates Smith do her one woman show based on Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies , I was so overcome that by the end...

MAGICAL CREATURES

Walking alongside the Atlantic one morning last week, I saw how tides had created in the sand a pattern of infinite play that stretched as far inland as the ocean could reach.  Underfoot they massaged my bare soles, that outer layer of my imagination,  and set my senses spinning into the surf itself where anything is possible, the ocean herself the artist, the beach her fabric from which she might raise up the most magical creatures, the ones  we hear as we fall asleep with the window open, the surf's voice singing its caravans of  imaginary elephants thundering like freight trains, only to take to the sky like gulls when we rise from our beds in the morning to look, to verify, to go running out into the  landscape of water kneaded signs, ocean

 language for what goes on underneath 

the eyes of moon and sun, whitecaps pulled to shore, reaching their lacy fingers toward where we lay in darkness, dreaming the earth back to its beginnings, for there is always more than one beginning.  And always will be, as long as the ocean has its way with the sands we walk upon.

(with thanks to Magpie Tales)

Guest Poet: Anora McGaha

Anora McGaha is my featured poet this week, come to spend some time in my kitchen, along with--yes--a frog!  She is fascinated by the natural world, and as you can see from the poem that follows, she finds poetry in it.  She now lives outside Raleigh, a transplanted Yankee who plans to stay in the South.   I think she knows that North Carolina is the best home a writer could have.  Anora gives a brief portrait of herself:

I was born in Boston and my grandparents home in Cambridge Massachusetts was the most constant home I knew. My father was a diplomat, and my mother was half Italian and half American, and the daughter of a diplomat. We grew up moving every 9 - 24 months around the Mediterranean. Studying a little Arabic, a lot of French, some Italian. I majored in Chinese at university, and did my time in the corporate world in Boston, New York,DC and Raleigh, and now have my own business doing writing and multi-media content development for online marketing and publicity. I've been writing poems since high school. I draw from many traditions, and have been influenced by too many languages and places and experiences.

Kitchen Keeper's Emerald

Frog-frog

leaps onto

the back door

window pane

every other night

Brown eyes peering

into the dark

white skinned belly

pressed against the glass

Little finger toe pads

gripping

as if made to belong

on the back deck door

Frog-frog’s pale throat

pulses like a baby

feeding

Waiting

for the flyers

to draw near 

the kitchen light 

slipping out

into the night

Frog-frog

embodies green

spring green

brilliant green

precious green

Exotic as

the rain forest

poison frogs

or the latest jewel-tone

enameled smart car

Frog-frog 

came from Cary

twice before

a guest at the Cary 

back deck door

Kitchen keeper

didn’t know he

made the move

to Apex

'Til

one winter morning

hidden in a pot

under rotting

dark browned leaves

a green as fine

as emeralds

Two years later

Kitchen keeper

left  the shades open

after sunset

and there he was

Frog-frog

on his sitting spot

on the deck door glass

Frog-frog doesn’t like

the camera’s flash

and springs away

like Barishnikov

in ballet

Nightly

Kitchen keeper

peers into the glass

that keeps the bugs

at bay

Hoping to see

North Carolina’s

leaping emerald

Frog-frog

July 30, 2011

Anora's frog

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: Guest Blogger: Julie Brooks Barbour

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: Guest Blogger: Julie Brooks Barbour

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?

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: REMEMBRANCES OF ANNIE LEE, continued.

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: REMEMBRANCES OF ANNIE LEE, continued.

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.