At the division
in the clouds,
she gathered the
late harvest,
as light
assembled and
comprehended
before the first frost,
waving at a point below
to handfuls of borne fruit
-not yet ripened.
Radiance jumped into the crevasse,
its purpose met
and bequeathed
to sequent moments.
In an extrusion
a mist of poems
read to the pink dusk
of September
-a pearlescent haze suspended-
before some fell like blooms
from a Rose of Sharon
– left to wane and decay with the days to bronze-
And some,
blossomed in full,
agape and yawning with nectar’s tumescence,
curled tightly in a twist,
a final coalescence suspended
there and left in her mind,
deliquescent.
the tactile feel
when I drink
from a
red plastic cup
with vertical ridges-
waves that undulate at
my tracing fingertips.
and after a time-
combined with the condensate
colluded from
hot and cold-
I wipe clean the surface
and clasp my hands
tightly –
as if to shutter
the memory.
In a twildly dusk, I see
a flaxum and her mimbles, we
open talk and loydal sing
with sunbeam-laden mulbering.
The verse rafeals a higher cause,
and willently, we sing then pause,
our fragenotions echo there
as we chorus contricare.
As just as then, we breathed and stopped,
fixembled, stable, clembed and swapped
A song sincerely wooed, then freed
and flaxum/poet now agreed.
Then in mirist silence found,
tracing back with embered sound
songs at dusk- the most revered
The ferrel-maried moon appeared
and strummed the night to denser aires
with open chords and fortunes fair.
It is in the sounds
the leaves make when the breeze blows,
or in the solo song
of the catbird, after the wind dies.
There is a beginning, middle, and end-
to declare origin,
divine their pivot-
The end is always the absolute.
Recalling what came before-
She takes photographs-
framed with a delicate touch between
her thumb and forefinger
to record a point.
a reference to the during
where her moment breathes.
The lights illuminated,
then passed her
on the serpentine highway,
as she kneeled in prayer;
people in their
own cars looking
at the road
and ignoring the eglantine
bush in bloom.
The poet, from his slant,
saw her lament
-the context in thorns-
and captured her tears,
knowing
she would never
read his words.
between the plane trees
by the lake
I would place a park bench
so that I could watch
the water gesture
and volley,
shaded from the sun
quiet interrupted
by a cardinal, or
the leaves that surmount
distant sounds of
traffic,
reminding me of
continuum
states
that overlap
between the plane trees
************
between the plane trees
that overlap
states
continuum
reminding me of
traffic
distant sounds of
the leaves that surmount
by a cardinal, or
quiet interrupted
shaded from the sun
and volley,
the water gesture
so that I could watch
I would place a park bench
by the lake
between the plane trees.
What makes a Poet Laureate?
Is it a lifetime of service, enthusiasm for your craft? A prolific output of quality work?
A willingness to be a part of something beyond yourself?
Lily Peter (1891-1991) was the Poet Laureate of Arkansas from 1971 until her death in 1991. She was born in rural eastern Arkansas to a farming family, descendents of German/Austrian immigrants who had traveled the length of the American landscape to eventually settle in the harsh Mississippi River delta. Lily was the oldest of nine children of whom only five survived into adulthood. As the eldest, she had responsibility put on her. It is likely that Lily developed a strong sense of herself through schooling and a desire to learn. She was educated at home until her mother and father could no longer keep up with her eagerness to learn; they sent her to area schools. Eventually, she was sent to live with relatives in Ohio in order to receive a proper education. There was recognition by her parents that education was the way to a solid future and it was evident during this time that there were a shortage of qualified teachers in rural Arkansas. While Lily was away in Ohio, her father died in a farming accident. Lily was told not to return for the funeral because she was still in school and wouldn’t be able to return in time to finish the year. It is no surprise that after graduation, Lily chose to enter the teaching profession and returned home to help support the family. She helped educate her siblings, took care of her frail mother, helped run the farm…she took on the leadership role of the family.
Flight of Birds**
Blackbirds
banking into the wind against a lilac winter sky
fill me with wonder and a sense of doom.
How little time have they and I
here to enoy the swirling wintry bloom
of the thin petaled air!
Wild words
crowd to my lips and are not spoken.
Consciousness, the shared treasure we may not
keep,
we spend our breath in destroying, and when it is
broken
and lost in the last sleep,
who will there be to care?
Her imaginative nature was evident in her childhood. In her biography*, it states that when she turned 5, she was convinced that she would be grown up and wanted to clean the barn by herself. When she woke that day and discovered she had not grown, she was inconsolable. She cried all day. It was this emotional attachment to her desires/imagination that shaped Lily’s future. It was clear that as an adult, Lily became very self-reliant. She continued to seek educational opportunities and ways to experience the world. She never married, though she had several suitors and was even engaged at one point.
Lily Peter began writing as a child, as playing with words seemed to satisfy her need for inventiveness. Most of her early writings consisted of journal entries, observations about community life in rural Arkansas, bits of light verse, and correspondence, all of which is contained in the archives at the University of Central Arkansas. Later in life, her poetry held a more somber tone. For example, “The Green Linen of Summer,” shown below is about protection of yourself against difficulties that are inevitable in life; I think it reflects her practical view of the world, based on her experiences with loss (death of her father and mother) and struggles to maintain her family’s farm during floods, epidemics, etc.
The Green Linen of Summer**
image courtesy of etsy.com
I wrap my thoughts in the green linen of summer
Against the terror of the dragon wind,
And pray that the linen may not too soon be thread-
bare,
Its texture thinned.
For by and by I know will come November
With its wintry blast;
And what is there to keep body and soul from
freezing,
If the linen do not last?
She only published four volumes of poetry*** in her lifetime. Yet, this didn’t seem to define her. She was much more to the state of Arkansas than a published poet. She was a teacher for 40 years, a successful cotton farmer, an environmental advocate, an accomplished violinist (studied at Columbia and Julliard), a writer, and a philanthropist. She had supported musical causes throughout her adult life, mostly on behalf of the Moravian Church. One of her ancestors was the composer John Frederick Peter, who was influencial in early American music. She underwrote the cost of bringing the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1969 by putting a mortgage on her plantation. She did this because she wanted “the people of Arkansas to be exposed to good music, to have a chance I didn’t have.”
Aftersong Instead of a Coda**
To leave this music,
to lie forever in the moonless
dark, where is no peach blossom, cloud or willow,
will be hard for me, who have loved this swampland always.
But in the dark I shall somewhere find Persephone,
and she will take my hand and I will say, “Please
show me the way of the journey back to the sunlight!”
Persephone has made it countless times and would
know!
And some spring morning you will see us running
up the slope
of the thickety bayou with violets in our hands.
And suddenly
I shall be translated to music: a prelude
of April grass; the improvisation of the bacchanal
muscadine; a transposition of chlorophyll,
the plangent chord that evokes the wild elder and
hawthorne
from the numbered bass of the atoms, the rhythm
of light.
Lily Peter lived to see 100 years. One of her more well-known poems is “Note Left on a Doorstep,” which gives us her view of the beauty of life and how it overcomes death.
**************
* A Nude Singularity, Lily Peter of Arkansas, AnnieLaura M. Jaggers, UCA Press, 1993. The title is derived from the astronomer’s terminology of an unexplainable phenomenon. This phenomenon being how Lily Peter became all the things she did, in spite of all the odds against her.
**Lily Peter,
from “The Green Linen of Summer and other Poems”
copyright 1964 by Robert Moore Allen
(out of print)
***Her published works consist of a collection of published poems entitled “The Green Linen of Summer and other poems,” copyright 1964 Robert Moore Allen ; “The Sea Dream of the Mississippi” (another collection of poems), “In the Beginning, Myths of The Western World retold in poetry and prose,” The University of Arkansas Press, 1983; “The Great Riding, The Story of Desoto in America,” originally published in 1966 by Robert Moore Allen (republished by the University of Arkansas Press in 1983).
rain falls,
hardly delightful –
in a moment that creation
dictates,
then washes into a gutter
as its sound waves sizzle
on impact.
like crying,
its tears collide with others,
browbeating the night
into acceptance
because it is what it needs
and not a want.
Meanwhile, strained eyes skim
a blanketed sky
seeking solace
hidden by billow
and murk,
for an orb that,
even paled or papered,
truly
needs to be seen.
may gasp,
as the skin is breached
-throwing succinct directives to the air
telling you where next to move your fingers,
how to handle with a gentle -ness,
exposing more flesh
as the
rough exterior
is pulled away in a continuous motion.
do not crush
this will force the pulp down
to the ground, wasted.
when ready, its sweet odors and juices
may now be tasted
and consumed.
Taps and Ratamacues 