POET OF THE DAY: doris davenport

Doris Davenport has been a friend for many years. We've shared our stories and poems, as well as photos of cabbages, clouds, vistas, trees, and each other. Doris never fails to delight with her poems. Here are some new ones from her 8th book of poetry, sometimes i wonder, to wake you up on a Monday morning.

some mornings

these feet have to learn

how to walk

all over again

(i have to learn how

to walk again.)

the feet teach each

other the basic step

step move up to

the ankles, the

legs & knees then to

these recalcitrant thighs

thick lazy things supple in

supinity & slow they learn:

move. now. like. this.

and then some mornings

poems walk

all over me

i agree with the Universe

3-4000 years ago what

did Native Inhabitants

of this place do on

a wet rainy Friday

mountain morning with

no cars in which

to rush off to

jobs, errands and

urgent must-do’s

in tepees, tents,

caves did they

slowly wake and

stretch, thank a

Higher Power, feed

children, themselves

then - sleep more? Meditate

the world into being? Allow

the world to be?

poems outside the window

already across the

street trees

gone from

bud to leaf

from whitish

yellow to glistening bright

new green the air

softly drifts yellow

i long,

now, to read

classic Chinese women

poets in the original.

Copyright 2010 by doris davenport

Frank X Walker

Another of my favorite poets featured in the current Appalachian Heritage journal is Frank X Walker, who coined the term Affrilachian Poet. Walker's book about York, the personal slave of William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, is a fasicnating book. The poem below gives you a sample of York's voice. Walker's website is frankxwalker.com; there you will more about his other books, as well as biographical information.

WIND TALKER

---from Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York


“I proceeded on the sandy coast and marked my name on a small pine, the day of the month and year…”
–William Clark, November 19, 1905

If I could make my words dress
they naked selves in blackberry juice
and lay down on a piece a bark, sheep
or onion skin, the way Massa do.
If I could send a story home to my wife
float it in the wind, on wings or water
I’d tell her about Katonka, the buffalo
and all the big wide and high places
this side a the big river.
How his family, numbering three for every
star in the sky, look like a forest when they
graze together, turn into the muddy Mississippi
when they thunder along, faster than any horse,
making the grass lay down
long after the quiet has returned.
How they lead us through the mountain snow
single file, in drifts up to our necks.
How they don’t so much as raise a tail
when I come round with my wooly head
and tobacco skin, like I’m one a them
making the Sioux and Crow think me
“Big Medicine, Katonka who walk like man.”

Today we stood on the edge of all this
and looked out at so much water, the mountains we crossed
to get here seem a little smaller.

As I watched black fish as big as cabins take to the air
and splash back in the water like children playing
I thought about you, us and if we gone ever be free,
then I close my eyes and pray
that I don’t live long enough to see
Massa make this ugly too.





Frank X Walker, photo by Tracy Hawkins