Jon Grier's piece Pisgah Songs captures the beauty of the NC National forests. The poets kindly allowed their poems to be posted below.
Looking Glass (Keller Cushing Freeman)
I send you winter love:
ice crystals glittering like mica
in the stiff red clay; the caught breath
of a silent creek, turned glass
by last night's cold; the oldest stars
shivering light from distances
re-marked in years; lines
a severe wind drew and then erased,
tracks a-cross the landscape of a face,
a bare December heart,
wreathed with all the lost green
seasons it remembers.
Black Mountain (Marian Willard Blackwell)
In the eggshell light of winter dusk
awash behind a tracery of limbs,
I am suffused with apprehension:
everything I love in this deep world is fragile.
Long after our footprints (Jan Bailey)
folded into leaf and the sprig
of holly you snapped and stuck
in the lapel of your loose coat
curried and browned; and long
after we stopped speaking
of the vexed hawk which shrieked
as we dawdled on the parkway
path, reluctant to take up
the suitcase of departure;
and long after the surly creek
burst into glee and chickadees
were upstaged by warblers
and the poplars shimmered
and the pines brooded, we stored our
springtime hearts beneath the bed
in gray plastic boxes, air tight
and perfectly trussed in mothballs,
like guests we’d grown weary of
and buried, lest they break into song.
No Straight Path (Marian Willard Blackwell)
No straight path will get you to the peak.
The steepest trail will loop, at times descend
to the faint gurgle of a creek.
No straight path will get you to the peak.
With any shortcut that you think you seek
you miss the look-out right around the bend.
No straight path will get you to the peak.
The steepest trail will loop, at times descend.
The Grammar of Spring (Marian Willard Blackwell)
Dwarf irises are out.
I see, he sees.
We pass without speaking.
In pluperfect purple syntax
a golden understanding
we had found without seeking.
Laurel Creek (Sue Lile Inman)
A turn in the path, a winding down
into a sea of ferns and old tree trunks
draped in moss. A tangle of laurels
lean and twist above the creek.
Their shadows create moving patterns,
antique mystery. Along the edge where
springs feed a clear deep pool, dark
oak leaves give off sharp spice. Stones,
like guardians, space themselves. Pebbles,
smooth or jagged, make way for her bare
feet. She sings as she sheds her clothes.
At the Cabin, One Last Time (Sue Lile Inman)
So what can I do
in the time left here?
Sit on the porch,
watch twilight change
gold sky to yellow cream,
watch color drain
from flame azalea.
Hemlocks deepen;
the greens, so varied in daylight,
of poplar, oak, pine, willow,
blue spruce blend, their distinct hues
swallowed by night shade.
From the eaves, bats take off.
Birds subside.
The woods are dark,
and now the porch.
The sky’s still light;
night travels from the ground up.
The stream splashes on
like distant steady rain.
One lone bird calls out:
I’m here. I’m here.
Blue Mountain Breakdown (Keller Cushing Freeman)
Here, no silent spring.
Instead, the numbing shrill
of sawteeth gnawing into wood,
the chill knife-slice on skin
too shocked to bleed,
the wrenching cry of dry limbs
torn away from sky,
the fall, relentless as a battle-beat of drums.
When the March wind comes
it makes a hissing sound,
scouring the ground to granite bone.
Gone are the mitigating trees,
the brambled underbrush,
that might have hushed the onslaught.
Unchecked, the merciless rain
devours centuries of soil,
sluicing all sustenance
down thousands of dark veins.
Such happenings, unheard,
will haunt our children’s dreams.
About the Your Compositions segement of On the Keys:
This part of the show features newer works (since 2000) for the piano and sometimes accompanying instruments. Want your piece featured? Send David Kiser an email at Keys@scpublicradio.org