A Wee Trip to the UK

Bent Mountain

Oheka.

            Watch them, ‘round they go.

            I straighten my legs and lean back for the ride.

                        ‘Tis always fun as they fly down the narrow road where we once walked.

                        (We ran, too, and kissed leaning against the sweetgum,

                         your burnished fingers lifting me swiftly,

                        my toes dripping clay from the creekbed.)

But, Oheka. The mountain of the Tutelo.

Full of surprises for the sojourner.

            As I said, quickly down the thin lane

            then whoosh

                        up

                                    and around

                                                            and down

                                                                                    then up again

            breaths held/breaths echoing down

                        dark green slides of pine and bear and berry.

Watch how the children laugh, eyes popping, a shine uncitylike.

Watch her grab his hand as he tightens the grip on the wheel. His neck is a vein of limestone now.

Their grey soft pup in the far back, tongue out, head back and forth as they turn

            and climb

                                    and climb again.

Off to pick apples, to taste wine, to listen to the music of those who followed us.

A melody, jarring a bit to the ears, but pleasant.

                        (Our songs were voices. You laid me gently on the yellow flowers

                         and hummed. The sun was setting over Oheka. Deer stirred,

                        turkey chased the locust. If my father heard us, he never said.

                        Your bare feet led us now. I sat on you and dreamed, head back,

                        as you whistled like the long brown bird.)

The car stops, and the woman walks over to the old cemetery. She lays a wreath for China Alice.

Grandmother.

They move again, atop Oheka.

I take many rides. I’ve held on to wagons as they climbed the dips. I’ve seen the first autos,

mired in red mud. Frustration in bowlers, then driving out. Buses and pickups, I’ve ridden them all.

They don’t see me, of course, ‘tho sometimes it seems a little one in the back,

with pigtails as I had,

notices a change in the air,

a sense of good will,

a rope through many seasons that touches her nose to mine, unseen.

Below, the soft valley where we shared a long life.

We saw war. But we were companions and lovers/I felt your heart and you mine

through three generations then you stooped one day,

white hair still thick,

fell through the grasses.

                        I blew tiny kisses all over your quiet face, then covered you in rushes.

Now, I ride, and in my hidden pockets I carry you.

I feel you quicken as the people climb. I see you walk through fall’s orange sun as their glasses

tinkle

            and their children play

                        and the woman and the man touch as we touched

                                                and fall in arms at the river

As I wait by the road for a ride back down.

Oheka.

A Horse Limerick

There once was a big horse named Pleasure

who decided she didn’t care for her rug

so against the fence and the pole and the barn she rubbed

all the while snorting, blinking, chewing her cud

and then flung her green coat in the mud. 

Virginia Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving in Weyers Cave, Virginia, circa 1974, at the Eavey farm. My brother Billy in the front, with tawny hair, my Grandfather in the rear, with red cap, supervising. 

Deer Me

I’ve mended the white rope fences since May,

Pleasure watching, smelling of horse and mischief.

Every night after a storm, the wet rope and red clay.

Every evening when the sun is setting over Floyd ridge.

Some mornings in a rush before work,

but what horse cares for work?

Now, summer ends.

The pasture is high due to complications.

Husband builds a sturdy pine fence

as the horse watches.

The sun sets more northerly now.

And I run out after supper

To mend fences again.

Great White watches.

Someone once said that animals know more than we.

Oui, so it may be.

In the far corner yards from the big stone,

two snorts.

Two quick wisps of movement.

Two clever and young

sisters,

taking off through the tall grass

winking with Pleasure.

Marigolds

In summer at Weyer’s Cave, my grandmother’s garden

sifted through sunbeams in a green, fenced square beneath the screened-in porch

where in the heat of the day she would let me

sit on the cool divan and sort through the browned photographs

of my uncles, at war, thin, tan and grinning

in heated lands of lost flowers.

My grandmother’s garden had zinnias and marigolds,

blue hollyhocks, and bumblebees

amidst the cabbage, and pole beans, tomatoes.

The barn was further down the path

and further yet the little creek where my grandfather taught me to catch bream

and cook them in a skillet at breakfast with buttermilk biscuits and cow’s soft butter.

The white-washed shed held secrets of jellies, and last fall’s hams,

and a pool table.

The men we didn’t know were in the next town planning, they were, talking big,

thinking to stretch a highway and dig an airport in our Valley before another war.

But August at the farm, along the dusty lane, above the spirea,

a tomboy napped and

the sepia’d shots of brave uncles slid like dew-grass to the floor.

Starting to write, in earnest

First chapter (with many edits ahead), in rough format, four characters created, three in 1690 and one so far in 2013. A few excerpts:


Bia understood numbers and in her camp the Tutelo men from the eight hills brought her grain and hides to count and pack...

...a sound never heard as though the mountain’s high boulder had been picked up by the sky and flung in one breath through the maqiga...

Staeka dipped his hands into the cool water and as he brought them up, a red sluice covered his long fingers.

Hey, Sugar

Tangerine fur on Great White full of

steamed energy               

at three still young

bouncing, ready for the mocker who waits on spring,

three snowfalls in a row

with smoked mist rising

yellow rolling buses on the road beyond in slush

chilled No-Name Creek

morn of  the horse

searching the pasture

for new fescue after winter of teases, winter of curling by tall fires,

winter of silly slides down sloped ridges passing black birds

winking

tossing sweet balls of cream’d white

to forget the chill

to seek green tips ‘mongst flakes

to think of the next, not the then, and swim in softness

through the mist.

at the Paddock

just a piece of a poem this time, as an illustrated short story begins to take shape:

So it was on the crispest of January days, as the air left the hills for the tall blue sky                   

that the man was amidst his chores,

into the barn and out as every other day...

Till the horse reared

And slanted her puddled eyes toward the man’s distress...

shhhhh.....

Silence
snow falling
soft steps
wishes
kisses
slip~laughing.

Hay.