I long to be in country.
Not for me a pot of plants
Reaching through a slant
Of rails to stretch for sun.
I feel no city comfort,
Complain of concrete, censor
Brick and shun a windowed
Wall, a steepled church.
My gods are forest deep,
On shadowed, mossy altars
Made of peat; my prayers,
The flowing streams, the rocks
They shape, the poetry they speak.
I know my self on woodland paths;
Their lore runs in my blood,
A rustic mapping through my veins
To find my heart in woods.
When K. Lawson-Gilbert of Old Mossy Moon challenged me to list the twenty-five writers who have influenced me the most, I knew what a difficult task was before me. Deep and wide exposure to good literature has certainly influenced my thinking, which in turn, influences my writing.
As air is to breath, literature is to writing. Reading and writing for me are recursive processes: I read, I write, I read again. My own writing informs my thinking, just as my thinking informs my writing, but my thoughts have also been formed by the West Virginia hills, the people whom I love, the roads I have traveled, and the writers whose works I have inhaled my entire life long.
Narrowing this list was nearly impossible, and I apologize to all my dearly beloved authors whose names do not appear below:
William Shakespeare
Homer
Charles Dickens
William Faulkner
John Keats
Percy Bysshe Shelley
William Wordsworth
Robert Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
William Blake
Thomas Hardy
Emily Bronte
Emily Dickinson
Edgar Allan Poe
Alfred Lord Tennyson
John Steinbeck
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Gerard Manly
John Donne
T.S. Eliot
Walt Whitman
William Blake
Virginia Woolf
Toni Morrison
E.B.White
I challenge Sarah Hina, Rachel Westfall, and Julie Buffaloe-Yoder to show us your lists!
to have your party as you wanted.
The evening sun shone from the ancient
river like a fire encased in steel.
The air, sweet and cold, rang little
breath clouds as we sang your Irish song.
Anna, swaying as she sang, held to you as you
had held to her when she was still your child.
You didn’t mind the clinging; you seemed
in no great rush to go your way alone.
When finally it was time for you to leave, you faltered,
torn between falling back with us and flying free.
Just then, the wind picked up the tune, the trees
piped out your name, and we in silence watched
as you embraced the sky.
When she signed up in ‘43
She got no special name,
But wore the eagle and the globe
And anchor all the same.
She trained with guns and aeroplanes
And learned to march just dandy,
But it was keeping things in check
She really came in handy.
They said she freed a man to fight
So he could win the war;
At home she did the vital jobs
That he had done before.
She typed the Captain’s letters up
And filed his work away,
She kept a calendar for him
And organized his day.
She felt great fear she couldn’t show
About the plans they made
To drop a bomb to end the war--
At least that’s what she prayed.
She gave her days to Uncle Sam
And when the war was done,
She shook their hands and said goodbye
And felt life had begun.
She married Jack and had three kids,
And when the kids were grown,
She helped by taking on the books
At the station that they owned.
She lived a life of sacrifice,
Blessed others by the giving,
And when she passed short years ago
She left a life worth living.
Upon her grave they set the stone
That told the world a story
Of one good life lived out in time
Without a thought for glory.
In words so sweet and measured out
Like little bits of candy
That summed her worth for all to see,
They said, “She came in handy.”
Me? Bothered by a stone?
Why, child, there’s a ring to it—
rhymes with dandy, and I was that,
in that uniform I wore.
They told us not to fraternize,
but I could have. I’d march by those men,
and I knew the power of my hips!
Never used it, though.
I was a good girl, a good Marine.
Wore the eagle, globe and anchor.
Did my job for God and Uncle Sam,
in my own way.
I freed a man to fight, they said.
He went to die, and I went to work.
Spent my time typing up the war
and praying they’d not drop that bomb.
But they did.
That might have been the happiest
and the saddest day of my life,
Cause then it was done.
I traded a salute and Semper Fi
for an apron and a big belly –
three younguns and fifty-three good years
with one man before it was over.
But you know, once a Marine,
always a Marine, and I never
felt so proud in all my life as the day
they planted me here with the rest.
Seventy-nine years doing
for others what I could, and I reckon
I earned the way they summed my life.
It’s no insult, child: I came in handy.
Don’t fool yourself --
I am no goddess,
here to bless your way.
I’m just a woman,
weaving toward a life
while you spin
beyond the cliffs
of my yearning.
And you, Hero,
wandering in dreams,
when you strain
against the mast,
think of me,
alone here at my loom,
picking threads and
trying to compose
my own Siren’s song.
Think of me
and remember --
though goddesses
roll apples at your feet,
it was flesh and blood
nurtured the seeds
and wove the sails
that freed you.
