TIMBERLINE: Poem

TIMBERLINE

Looking up at the ruins of them,

ragged edges those dead trees

raise against the sky, and beyond

them the cut of a hawk’s wing,

the curve of the river

of cloud shapes, I’m likely to squander

this morning with dreaming them

turned back to women again, having grown

old along with these mountains

and left here to die like the rest of us.

I’d sit for hours and watch,

if I could, how the wind through their branches

keeps trying to make them sway,

supple as girls again, line-dancing

over the rocky horizon of Snowbird.

But not much of morning’s left.

I should be piecing a new quilt or mending

my husband’s socks. I should be stirring

the beans left to scorch in the pot.

What does wind whisper

up there of death? Or is dancing

the gist of it? As for my need to bear witness

to all I cannot keep from dying,

the truth is I’ve never liked loose ends.

Just look at my quilts: a succession

of rings, wreaths, and whirligigs.

Threaded since daybreak,

my needle waits here on the table

as if to remind me how stitches too small

to be known save by touch

of the thread toiling under my fingers

can fashion a way out of one death and into

another. So stand up, I tell myself.

Shake out your stiff limbs and sway

like your sisters up there on the ridge,

still in line for the next dancing lesson.

from BLACK SHAWL, LSU Press, 1992

RIPE, from Black Shawl

RIPE



Dead end.
This dirt road
at daybreak.

One window
burns yellow
as fruit flesh.

The gauze
clutch of spider webs
almost

but not quite
shines. Where is the sun?
Where the woman who lately leaned

over her wash basin,
daring the cold water
splash her eyes shut?

She does
not answer
anyone’s name.

Have her feet
come unstuck
from the kitchen floor

where she stood
most of last
night at her stove

spinning
wild berry
juice into

length upon

length of the sweetest
black thread?

(from my BLACK SHAWL, LSU Press, 1992)

I've been cleaning out old computer files and came across my Black Shawl backup poems, among them this poem. I immediately thought of our elderberry bush, with its several bouquets of deep purple berries. Elderberry jelly? Yes, I've made that. Doesn't compare to blackberry, though, which is what I was thinking about when I wrote this.

SNOW ON THE MOUNTAINS

SNOW BREATH

Snow on the mountains.

Where did the wind go? I stand with my shawl

wrapped around me and listen.

Snow on the mountains.

The holly-pip red as a blood blister,

thorns reaching out to me.

Snow on the mountains.

Don't beg me to come back inside

lest I catch my death.

Snow on the mountains.

The river a hard road to travel.

My feet slide on ice cobble.

Snow on the mountains.

Gone south, I will say when you shout

from the riverbank.

Snow on the mountains.

Against my ear you held a conch shell once,

ask What do you hear?

So much snow on the mountains,

I hitched up my dress and ran home.

How could I tell you then,

hearing snow on the mountains

refuse to melt, that after so long,

a woman's soul searching

through snow on the mountains

will sink, out of breath, in the silence

of nothing more, nothing less.

From Black Shawl, LSU Press, written in response to an ancient Welsh poem, composed between the 9th and 12th centuries, in which the line "Snow On the Mountains" is repeated throughout.

OF SHAWLS AND REPRINT FEES

My husband bought this shawl for me in Florence, Italy many years ago. I keep it draped over my bedroom wall. I think I may have worn it once. It's the sort of shawl to wear to an opera, maybe Tosca or La Traviata. It's also the sort of shawl that feels out of place here in Cullowhee. Actually, it ought to be an opera singer's shawl. And since I sing opera only in my dreams, amazing myself as I walk onstage to hear Musetta's aria coming out of my mouth, maybe I've always felt that this shawl is just too special for someone like me to wear.

The black shawl below is another matter. I ordered it from the Sears Catalog--yes, Sears--so you know how long I must have had it. Whenever I wore it, it picked up various debris in its long fringes, like a net, and so I came to think of it that way, as a net gathering up a woman's sensibility. Her dreams, fears, and songs.



That image was the start of my third book, Black Shawl, from which Celia Miles and Nancy Dillingham wanted to reprint the title poem in their recent Clothes Lines anthology. They couldn't afford it, though, because my publisher, asked a huge reprint fee. So much money for one poem? I was astonished and horrified.

Nothing to do, then, but to write another shawl poem, which I did surprisingly quickly. Maybe the mountain woman's voice in it is a close cousin to the woman's voice in Black Shawl. Yes, it's in the anthology, which again I recommend highly. And although I don't approve of any poet's poems being kept from anthologies because of unreasonable reprint fees, I'll have to concede that this time those fees pushed me into writing a poem that I like and am pleased to see published in this anthology.


River Shawl




She’d dribble the fringe of her shawl
in the river. The quick current rippled the black threads.
They floated as she wished she could.
They wanted to be swept away but she held fast
to what had been woven. Her mother’s shawl.
Now her own. How much longer
to be handed down, this black keepsake?

She’d lift out the fringe,
rub it over her face, feel the cold
water run down her cheeks,
down her neck,
into white folds of flesh underneath the dress
worn before her by her kinswomen.

What might she catch in this web
if she let it drift far enough
out of the shallows,
into the dark center
where she could not see the bottom?

How far would she have to wade
until she stepped into
some other world, under the sun-dappled
surface? The river itself was a shawl,
always wrapping itself round the hills,
threaded with golden light,
trailing its castaway leaves.

It could weave her into its weft,
carry her farther than she could imagine--
the sea she could feel surging
inside when she let herself
want what she knew she could not
have, a life she could open
as wide as a closet door onto
garments no woman had worn
before her. Nobody’s life but her own.




from Clothes Lines, ed. by Celia Miles and Nancy Dillingham, Catawba Publishing, 2009.

THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER

I sang this song when I studied voice in high school. I thought it a bit sentimental then, and find it almost unbearable now, even though its author, Irish poet Thomas Moore was a friend of Shelley's and Byron;s,  and thus has good Romantic credentials. The thought of the group Celtic Woman singing it is enough to make me imagine slogging through treacle. Actually, they are the perfect vehicle for it. But I digress. The rose I prefer is the Rose of Sharon. Here's Moore's poem, followed by the concluding lines of mine. You'll have to go to Black Shawl to read all of it.

'Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming all alone,
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.
No flower of her kindred,
No rose bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh.

I'll not leave thee, thou lone one,
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go sleep thou with them;
'Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o'er the bed
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.

So soon may I follow
When friendships decay,
And from love's shining circle
The gems drop away!
When true hearts lie withered
And fond ones are flown
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?

ROSE OF SHARON (conclusion) from BLACK SHAWL (LSU PRESS
Who will save me, I wonder,

as I pleat these white tissue

roses I gather for garlands

and bridal bouquets. (Now the nick

of a hat pin! Some blood

from my finger squeezed into each

center.) Whoever he is,

when he comes with his silver

axe swinging, his saw teeth

that grin through the laurel

hells, I will be Rose

Among Wild Roses. I will be Rose

Willing. I will be ready.

Now, that's the kind of Rose I like!

Lunch With Harold and Jane

Yesterday we had lunch at Spring Street Cafe in Sylva with Harold and Jane Schiffman, who spend summer and fall in their mountaintop home in Robbinsville. Harold has set my Alma poems to music in a cantata titled Alma (see sidebar with cd cover and link to Harold's website) and last year premiered in New York City a song cycle for soprano and piano based on my "Blood Mountain" sequence from Black Shawl. He also composed cello music for the cd of Wake that Spring Street Editions released several years ago.




He's interested in seeing new poems, hoping he hears music rising out of them. I'm hoping so, too. Here is one of the new poems I gave him, in the chapbook Lit by Language, published for this year's Asheville Wordfest. The theme? Azaleas. (If you would like to order a copy of this chapbook, please contact Laura Hope-Gill at laurahopegill@aol.com)






RAPT

for Chris, former student

“Nothing exists I can’t azalea with a glass of water.
Should there be a three month grace azalea for sex?...
I blow smoke at the azalea and write
letters to imaginary lovers, azaleas. "

C.S. Carrier, from Azalea

I too love how azalea
seduces me,
makes me want more of her
coming out, debutante
no matter how many years

she has been resurrected
from mulch. What azalea desires
I can’t fathom, other
than just enough water
to suck, enough
humus to snuggle her roots
into. So, let azalea be,
kindling again atop Gregory Bald.

In the valleys’ front yards,
let her bloom white as doilies,
or Barbie-doll pink.
Let her dare to bloom gypsy magenta.
Don’t make her sell perfume
& cheap whiskey, or be a verb
curing heartburn or hangover.

Azalea bloomed overtime
in my hometown. Sure,
I took her for granted,
but that was before I climbed
Gregory Ridge and
beheld her as flame into
which I could disappear,
turning to ash on the wind.

When azalea blooms now
in our mountains, I dream
about vanishing into her
small throat, my poem
like a proboscis
listening,
listening,
rapt in the sound of azalea.