Kathryn Stripling Byer

I recently discovered the amazing poetry of Kathryn Stripling Byer, who is originally from Georgia and was North Carolina's poet laureate for 5 years.

I absolutely love her poetry.

I contacted her recently and asked permission to post some of her poems and she graciously granted it. So without further ado, I will let her poems speak for themselves.

 

WEEP-WILLOW
       for Lee Smith


At night she watched the road
 and sang.  I’d sigh and settle on the floor
 beside her.  One song led
 to one more song.  Some unquiet grave.
 A bed of stone.  The ship that spun round
 three times ‘ere it sank,
 near ninety verses full of grief.
 She sang sad all night long


and smiled, as if she dared me
 shed a tear.  Sweet Lizzie Creek swung low 
 along the rocks, and dried beans rattled
 in the wind.  Sometimes her black dog howled 
 at fox or bear, but she’d not stop,
 no, not for God Himself, not even if He came
 astride a fine white horse and bore the Crown
 of Glory in His hands.  The dark was all 
 she had.  And sometimes moonlight
on the ceaseless water.  “Fill my cup,”

she’d say, and sip May moonshine
till her voice came back as strong as bullfrogs
in the sally grass.  You whippoorwills
keep silent, and you lonesome owls go haunt
another woman’s darkest hours.  Clear,
clear back I hear her singing me to sleep.
“Come down,” she trolls,
“Come down among the willow
shade and weep, you fair
and tender ladies left to lie alone,
the sheets so cold,
the nights so long.”

from Wildwood Flower, LSU Press

Legato

When the bell 

rang out noontime,

they lounged under oak trees
and drank from a mason jar

sweet tea    the taste

of a lemon slice lingering

at stovetops

and wash basins

cradles

and deathbeds

their voices kept

rising and falling 

like wind riffling 

cotton fields  

folding sheets

scrubbing floors,

spinning mayhaw juice

into a red thread

they were all the time

 singing

but we didn't listen

because it was backdrop

to what we sang

back ground

and ground back into

darkest leaf mold

that covered 

the root of our other

life     theirs

with which we never learned

how to harmonize.

 

first published in Pembroke Magazine

 

River Voices

 

           " ...  say the  past is a muddy

river"

                                       

                                                     -- Evie Shockley

 

When  she lowers her hands to the river

she feels many dead voices translating river.

 

Her fingers turn cold, but her lips part,

as if, like a hooked  fish, she longs for the river.

 

Don’t look down, her mother warned; shifting

the Ford into second gear, crossing the river.

 

The drawbridge’s rusty spine still rattles

memories she tries to dredge from the river.  

 

Old men cast their histories into the depths

she can’t reach.  Stories keep shape-shifting over the river.

 

The trees keep their roots to themselves;

but they let their reflections be stroked by the river. 

 

When she hears the cricket frogs singing,

she wants to lie down on the banks of the river.

 

Come night she hears voices.  A drunken brawl.  Somebody

cursing the day he was born.  Somebody trying to drown in the river.

 

The backwater nags at her.  Dare she strip 

down to the bone and walk barefooted into the river?

 

first published in Pembroke Magazine