For me, the days I write poetry kiss the ordinary with extra.

From the start, I enter a zone, oxygenated, fresh, a walk into the new or into the old with new sight. It is at once a fragile state and tensile strong. I begin with a touch of fairy dust, proceed into intense struggle, and emerge with a secret stash.

Are the works good, great, or perfect? Of course not. Those adjectives don’t really apply. Does it speak? Is the voice clear? Does the string hook you and pull you in? Does the silk envelop and lift? Those are better questions, along with myriad others.

This week, my husband’s brother Robert requested the rights to publish the poem I wrote to his, my husband’s, and their brother James’s father who died not many years ago.

Of course I said yes. Most poets would, and I liked this poem and writing and re-writing it very much. I was excited when Jonathan Kevin Rice accepted it into the Iodine Poetry Review, accepted some suggestions he made, and then was more than happy to see it published there. See my earlier post which contains the poem.

I promised in still another post to let you see two winners I had in the North Carolina Poetry Society’s Pinesong Awards 2017. Here they are.

Poetry of Witness, 2nd Place

His Time Has Come

Silently I stand, too young

to speak, only listen, see,

I am the accidental witness

to your race. How does one

so young see it all–your car

racing him head to head

down the road–his car flips

over and over, crashes near

me, but others reach you quicker,

try to pull you from the wreck,

your neck is broken; you are

a young black man I do not know.

I mourn, cry for the life you

never had, and now I see

the car that raced you–white

one with a stripe, return

from the opposite direction,

as though a first responder.

This time his lights are flashing;

he wears official clothes,

exits his squad car to take

charge, file white papers,

end the race he had begun.

He glares, warns me off.

That was then. Now I am

old; my voice returns.

I loved the Judge’s comments, Ray McManus, who said in judging he looked for two possibilities, validation and revelation. He said when poems do this, we don’t just read them, but feel them. He said “His Time Ha Come” was a tight-set poem that explores the agony of silence in our youth and how, in time, that voice returns. He liked especially that the poet leads to the revelation but leaves to the reader to imagine how the voice will return.

Here is the second one:

Up from the Cape Fear

Mary Ruffin Poole American Heritage Award, Third Prize

From my upstairs window looking down, I see

a snake stretched out on sun-warmed gray stone.

Groggy from an afternoon’s nap, I think, charcoal,

round. What type of snake is this who sits upright, walks

on ground, like the serpent in Eve’s garden, neck high;

body spans entrance wing to wing in late summer sun.

Small head, I think, a black snake, or even a racer,

crawling on distended belly, full of rat. My son–

I am thick with sleep that won’t recede–he leaves

tomorrow for duty in Iraq. I see it as an omen.

Mesmerized, I watch, hypnotized by a snake

whose body is bigger, fuller, rounder than his head

who stretches out at 18 feet here in old N.C. We

entertain strange snakes that slither up from Cape Fear.

An albino moccasin, yellow underbelly, once

migrated up the banks of the dry river bed searching water

found us, his eyes red hot coals under the car. Head

raised, he slid aggressively toward us; this one lumbers.

Took two years’ research and a park ranger to discover

we harbored a Vietnamese cobra by our front door.

It’s okay, they don’t use other snakes’ holes;

they’ll keep wandering, looking for their own.

I just recently had a poem accepted into Iodine Poetry Journal, Volume XVI, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2015-2016 entitled, “Silver Star, Silver Sand.” I wrote the poem about my father-in-law Kenneth A. McKethan, Sr., of Fayetteville, after he died. We went through his last days with him both painfully and gracefully.

Sometimes it is more difficult to write a poem about someone you know, but in this case, such intense visual images came to me as I thought of his last days, one day I just had to turn to poetry to frame the time.

Here it is, as it appears in Iodine Journal, editor of which is Jonathan Kevin Rice. It is an honor to have this appear alongside many fine poems. The journal is available for purchase from them.

SILVER STAR, SILVER SAND

At the last, he opened up like the famous night flower,

gave a glimpse of the bigness that lived inside him.

In his final days, he spoke sentiments we never knew he held.

Locked in tight, now loosened, he tied knots of relationship,

apologized he had been feeling bad,

asked, worried, if he had made my daughter sad.

In the final moments, I told him not to wrest one more tube

from his bleeding arm. He looked at me in full-blown lament,

and asked, Well, why not? At the end when I didn’t come

fast enough, he called for me, and of course, I came.

Stayed all night, followed every order to the letter,

listened to the teacher explain how to tamp down the top

of the ice cream drum, put away the sherbet he had been served

he had no fondness for anyway, even when he could taste,

but now, he couldn’t swallow.

He told us what we all those years had longed to hear:

He loved us. He loved us all, repeated that again and again, thanked

us for all we’d done for him. He told us to turn off the light

over his bed, but to leave the door a-jar. He told us three ladies, waiting,

we could leave his bedside, now; it was time he went to sleep.

Good night, he said, and smiled. He turned away, tucked himself

into the shadows of fading light, the silvery hourglass sands

descending slowly through the night, falling

into morning of the waking day.

Mimosa Legacy

i.                                             Near the spreading mimosa canopy

we sat. Powder puffs soft and Southern formed a pink parade.

Sweet perfume lingered from that world, a world of

Our Father’s filled with hummingbirds and butterflies.

From Lebanon this heirloom seedling came—a love note

Aunt Peggy sent us off the mother tree; a daughter mimosa

blessed our return from foreign soil, home. That tiny seedling

grew, swollen to capacity like a giant umbrella shading our yard,

teemed with life, this year, like Lebanon’s original one had,

like Grandma’s did in Dunn. As children, we girls scaled

the tree, picked its sweet-scented puffs. Other heirloom plantings,

hand cut with love, seedlings and crocuses met us winging

home from overseas. I treasured the poetry of the flowers

Peggy shared, tossed across the highway divide like a bouquet—

heritage flowers bearing names that read like A Child’s Garden

of Verses—lily of the valley, daffodil and jonquil, peonies

and pansies, magnolia, Star of David, antique rose and mums,

silver bells and cockle shells.

ii.                                             I can see Aunt Peggy kneeling

by the great elm oak—bed around its roots trowel-tended,

flowers birthed under deft strokes by fingers which mastered

the ivories as well, bounced over keys. She sang songs appropriate

to every occasion, silly or serious, like Toothpick Alice

who washed herself down the tub drain. We heard her play

the Blues, Broadway hits, Bach’s cantatas, Czerny’s exercises,

Bethoven, Mozart, and Liszt. Peggy and Granny Mac gathered

us around the baby grand with hymns we all would sing.

Aunt Peggy’s wit was a sharp tool that honed a pithy truth,

words sliced facts accurately. Grandma’s character alive

in just three words, “whim of iron.” To the man who died

in a flight of helium balloons tied onto his chair, the word

was, “Let that be a lesson to him.”

iii.                                              Aunt Peggy poured skill

and energy into the arts, brought symphonies to the school,

art exhibits to the county. At First Presbyterian, she chose

the Sunday anthem, taught choir members how to pronounce,

hold notes, come in on time, hit the right key. Her soft spot,

her passion, was her children, inviting cousins in, as well.

Family watched as hope dipped to agony as for two hours

we searched for Gene. She wandered, heart breaking, until

she found him slumped low in the jeep asleep after a game

of hide ‘n seek. She burned the highway up looking for Louise

and me. Lost in the woods two miles down. Anger surfaced

once we were safe, in justice meted out—me banned from

your presence, separated two weeks—one for each hour of pain.

iv.                                             We spent a winter with you

at Lebanon when our heater broke. Aunt Peggy and Uncle Gene

absorbed us as their own; she invited us to Christmas in MacDonald;

where I read stories to Granny Mac in bed. Aunt Peggy followed

each of us with avid interest, detailed her grandchildren’s, great-nephews’

and nieces’ whereabouts, talents, interests, hurts, and victories

with love and concern. She dared tell me when my mothering

should change. Aunt Peggy’s presence lingers among us, joins

that of Uncle Gene’s: their legacy is our heritage. A canopy

of  blossoms rises from green leaves, forms a house like a mimosa

of diversely-grafted children, scented flowers, of rosemary and sage.

First Steps to Fulfilling Your Destiny

Dreaming is a 100-percent effectual way to get ahead. Believe me. Nothing that I am now seeing accomplished professionally or personally would ever have happened without my first having dreamed it.

When I first began ramping up to do watercolors, I was full of fear. I must not have seemed fearful to my aunt who thought she needed to deter me from harmful activity. Long years before I had any paintings to my name, when I was pregnant with my lovely first-born daughter, my aunt said to me, “Well, I guess you won’t be able to pursue your painting now, will you?”

Add anger to dreaming, and maybe you have come upon a magic combo. I have never been so angry in all my life. I fumed, fretted, and banged doors and tables. Mean, I thought. I griped about it to my husband. Then the inherited determination from both sides  kicked in, and I thought to myself, you’ll see. To make sure I would continue, I locked in my supplies for watercolors. Watercolors dried quickly and emitted no poisonous fumes in the house that would threaten my baby. I could rely on them.

That new resolve had to be postponed due to our move to Germany, so until I had a stable base, my dream could not go forward. Once there, with house and furniture, I started on the dining room table in the middle of all the activity, because I knew I could progress in short spurts of intense activity in defying her pronouncement. I started out ever so tenuously; beginning with teeny antique bud vases filled with the miniscule violets Erika would later pick on her way home from where the bus dropped her.

At some point I began writing a poem from the experience. This has since been published in literary magazines and in an English-Russian anthology. It appears in Russian and in English. A phrase from it embellishes the book’s divider page. You can hear my anger in the ‘you say,’ I think.

“Of a Substance Strong Enough

Dreams are great, you say,  for night-time–

like wispy clouds  that disappear at noon.

But I say dreams  are spit and fiber

spun and thrown  like spider webs–

filmy filament  which sticks mid-air,

catches and holds tight enough

for you to climb, run, live  (nest your babies on)

and yet,  still make it there.”

2d Publication rights, Earth and Soul: An

Anthology of NC Poets, Kostroma, Russian/English, 2001

Crucible, Warren Wilson University and The Lyricist, Campbell University

Imagine my extreme surprise years later, when I read an article on the ballooning action of spiders. It seems airplanes encountered much difficulty running into systems of spider webs high in the sky. Spiders build webs higher than anyone would earlier have imagined possible.

It seems that spiders, especially small ones and some other creatures, propel themselves upwards with a mechanical process called ballooning, or kiting.

They spin a very fine silk, called gossamer, to lift themselves off a surface. Then they use the silk as an anchor in mid-air. This fine silk has been called ‘gossamer’ since 1325 according to the Oxford dictionary. Again, no one knew then that gossamer was derived from spiders.

After hatching, a spiderling will climb as high as it can. It then stands on raised legs with its abdomen pointed upwards, a process called ‘tiptoeing.’ Then it releases several silk threads from its abdomen which produce a triangular-shaped parachute which will carry the spider away in updrafts. Even small gusts work. They may not go very far, or they may end up in a jet stream, depending on many components, but their trip could extend into the upper atmosphere.

Sailors have reported spiders in their ship’s sails miles from land. They can live a month without food. Evidently ballooning is the main way spiders migrate to isolated islands and mountaintops. They have been found as high as 16000 feet above sea level and on the tops of mountains and can live without food for close to a month.

Even without knowing this I wrote the phrase, “Dreams are spit and fiber, spun and thrown like spiderwebs….” It is gratifying to describe how something seems and have it proved factual. The odd thing is that this was the one phrase in my poem contested by a Russian sister-city poet, the phrase, ‘spit and fiber,’ was deemed unpoetic.

It is no small wonder that one of my favorite artistic and written images is the spider web, lace, tatting, tobacco-twine-tied coverlets, and fishing nets. My most recently finished painting is Crab-Net, with beautiful North Carolina blue crabs caught in the holes. The entire painting, done in watercolor, is accomplished in the negative, a painting process thought very difficult by most painters. It involves seeing in the negative, and painting the holes is also the largest kingpin step in the discipline of using the right-brained creative process. Only the space between the threads is painted because in transparent watercolor, one must leave the white of the paper showing to create the white. Another painting, “Dockside,” uses a net as a portrait background for an old sailor. A third painting has a net background with a harpoon, “Sea-Lit, the Sperm Whale Era.”

About seven years ago, I began leading creativity courses from my business j’Originals Art & Teaching Studio, and through a local church. I had just finished reading Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, in which we were encouraged to write three pages of unedited, stream of consciousness prose first thing in a day in a journal. We signed a contract with ourselves that committed to three months of seriously trying these things out. We agreed to make a ‘date’ with ourselves once a week to do something that our artistic child would love to do, all by ourselves. There was a creed and a prayer that we repeated for strength.

The purpose of the whole process was to make ourselves our own best friend, to bring ourselves to where we could trust ourselves. I began the experiment which I now cannot live without. After these seven years of more or less consistently doing this (I have around 30 journals to show for it or perhaps I’d better not show), I have learned its truth. What you dream, happens. Julia Cameron calls this ‘serendipity.’ Besides having the joy of that happening, I have learned that what you hate and journal, you can give up in minutes.

In short, this process recreated for me the means for ‘ballooning,’ for ‘tiptoeing,’ for reaching upwards and outwards from your gut, having faith, for trusting what or who comes in off the street, and for catching the updrafts of my dreams. # # #