Welcome to where I am, where my kitchen's always messy, a pot's (or a poet) always about to boil over, a dog is always begging to be fed. Drafts of poems on the counter. Windows filled with leaves. Wind. Clouds moving over the mountains. If you like poetry, books, and music--especially dog howls when a siren unwinds down the hill-- you'll like it here.


MY NEW AUTHOR'S SITE, KATHRYNSTRIPLINGBYER.COM, THAT I MYSELF SET UP THROUGH WEEBLY.COM, IS NOW UP. I HAD FUN CREATING THIS SITE AND WOULD RECOMMEND WEEBLY.COM TO ANYONE INTERESTED IN SETTING UP A WEBSITE. I INVITE YOU TO VISIT MY NEW SITE TO KEEP UP WITH EVENTS RELATED TO MY NEW BOOK.


MY NC POET LAUREATE BLOG, MY LAUREATE'S LASSO, WILL REMAIN UP AS AN ARCHIVE OF NC POETS, GRADES K-INFINITY! I INVITE YOU TO VISIT WHEN YOU FEEL THE NEED TO READ SOME GOOD POEMS.

VISIT MY NEW BLOG, MOUNTAIN WOMAN, WHERE YOU WILL FIND UPDATES ON WHAT'S HAPPENING IN MY KITCHEN, IN THE ENVIRONMENT, IN MY IMAGINATION, IN MY GARDEN, AND AMONG MY MOUNTAIN WOMEN FRIENDS.




Sunday, June 22, 2008

Home Again


I've been away for a week with my family in SW Georgia, for my uncle's funeral. The drive down in summer always makes me think again about how strong the call of home is. And the drive back to the mountains sings home to me just as strongly as heading south does. This is a poem I began years ago on one of those summer drives home to the farm where I was raised.


Coastal Plain

The only clouds
forming are crow clouds,

the only shade, oaks
bound together in a tangle of oak

limbs that signal the wind
coming, if there is any wind

stroking the flat
fields, the flat

swatch of corn.
Far as anyone’s eye can see, corn’s

dying under the sky
that repeats itself either as sky

or as water
that won’t remain water

for long on the highway: its shimmer
is merely the shimmer

of one more illusion that yields
to our crossing as we ourselves yield

to our lives, to the roots
of our landscape. Pull up the roots

and what do we see but the night
soil of dream, the night

soil of what we callhome.
Home that calls

and calls
and calls.

from Coming to Rest, LSU Press, 2006

4 comments:

Glenda Council Beall said...

We missed you. So Sorry about your uncle.
The poem sings to me of home. But home is not what I remember anymore. Home is gone now that Mother and Daddy are gone. And soon it will belong to someone else entirely.
But driving down those flat roads, seeing all the pecan groves, the fields planted in crops, fills me with memories that bring the tears.

Tipper said...

Whether it was good or bad-home calls. Loved the poem-sorry about your uncle.

Vicki Lane said...

what a treat your poems are! I've been visiting this blog every day in hopes of finding another helping of poetry to feed my soul. And now, today, a feast! Thank you kindly! We're glad you're back!

Susan M. Bell said...

Glad you're back, Kay. I am so sorry to hear about your uncle.

I know how you feel about the dual calls of home. When we head for Georgia to visit my mother-in-law, it feels like going home. Then, the feeling is just as real, if not more so, coming back to the mountains. I guess it's possible to have home in two locales.