all the southern ladies

here listening to southern ladies
talking about their mothers, lost lovers
 about their grandfathers
and death   Unrelenting gossip
oh please get me out of here
no more painted red toe nails
talking about sentimental shit
about their grandfathers' favorite music
how they want to be reincaarnated as violins
how the organza shimmered and the lavender glowed
couldn't wait to be married
ok i'm going to pretend to listen

longing for the sight of the Fireside Pentacostal Church
and picturing B Boys dancing in the aisles
give me Notes to a Native Son
and the people from whom our favorite music comes..
oh give me women
gwendolyn brooks
ella fitzgerald
big mama thornton
billy holiday

What Is Green?

What Is Green?

The healing color of hills

shimmering in the sun

a god-smack that makes me come undone

I want to go back to Black Mountain College

to the Blue Ridge and Alleghenies

back to molasses making at Mabry Mill

the sacred hill at Fincastle

that will take me away 

from what I saw in

the lunch line yesterday.

World War One Poets

World War One Poets

The 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme is coming up

Brings to mind the Royal Welsch Fusiliers

When the stench of horseflesh was in the battlefield

Seigfried Sasson threw hand granades

Jack Kipling, Rudyard's son, was killed

On Passing Through St. Martin's Gate

On Passing Through St. Martin's Gate

All buried together, these thousand men

Never to see their comarades again

Death became the great leveler

There was never a shot fired in anger

Here lies a lad who gave his all

Came East from the village of Thackerstall

Entered the war with his best mate

Together they entered through St. Martin's Gate

Auvers

Auvers


I stood on the ground where 

he stood,

looking at the same
church that he painted.
 painting in my childish way,
believing I cannot paint.


We came early, on a sunlit morning,
my son and I,

to the same field
where Van Gogh painted.
70 paintings in 70 days.

He only worked for 6 years.

To think had he lived to be 80,
the paintings, painting, paintings!

His headstone a short walk away --
 like walking through
a Van Gogh.
We stop there briefly
to read,
"here lies Vincent Van Gogh."

I hear him say,
"You think you cannot paint,
so by all means,
paint,
and that voice will be silenced."

Finding Beauty (c)

         "You can only 

find as much beauty 

as you carry."  

    Sometimes we fail

 to notice the beauty around us 

as we seek to find it 

elsewhere.

     

Me embracing the world on Tangier Island, Virginia, one year ago.