Thursday in the Mountains

Ok, no more whining. Considering what the people on the east coast are going through, the little snow I have received this year is nothing. Hope you all stay warm and safe until this is all over. I have been cleaning my office for the last few days while I get over some kind of crud in my chest. Guess it is going around here because everyone I see has had it. Spring and some warm weather should fix that.

Valentine’s day is upon us again, and I think I warned you guys last year at this time, so let this be a word to the wise. GET TO THE CARD SHOP!

Great Backyard Bird Count is this weekend, so hope to get out and do some counting. The Dark Eyed Juncos and Purple Finches are in great abundance just now, and the loons are back on the lake, so maybe we’ll see something special over the few days of the count.

I’m working on the blog today. Need to add some friends to the side bar, and update with some new looks over the next week.

I’ve been reading some of my old poetry magazines before donating them to the group, and am looking at some of my older poems in the hopes that I can finish them to my satisfaction this year.

I’m rethinking it all, and would love to have some of your things, and if you have a book out, I’d be thrilled to include an excerpt and where people can buy it. Just send what you want considered to me at robtkzga at bellsouth dot net.

So not much discussion on writing today, but I do have a poem to share. During a writing group exercise we were given the word Chocolate, so here is what I came up with. Have a wonderful weekend.

Robert

Chocolate

The child still remembers

The first taste

After cheese and peanut butter

From the government,

And garden fare.

Mama’s wash money

For an extravagance.

Writing Lists

In Ray Bradbury’s book Zen in the Art of Writing he makes this statement.
“But along through those years I began to make lists of titles, to put down long lines of nouns. These lists were the provocations, finally, that caused my better stuff to surface.”

I make lists. Lists of words I hear or read, words I hear spoken in the mountains, first lines of songs and poems, and names of towns I travel through. It’s just a natural thing with me. Over the years I’ve made lists for camping trips, bird lists, flower lists and lists of books I’ve read. Filled notebooks with ideas and prompts for writing. The words obsessive, compulsive come to mind, but lists have kept me going as a writer, and have pulled me from times when I thought I couldn’t put another word on paper.

The reason I mention this subject is to introduce the poem I’m going to share and read for you today. It started from a list of scientific terms and branched out from there. What do magnets do? Why do we use mathematics and what is theory? Are any of these metaphors for relationships? How far can one person be from another? All questions that produced a list that walked me into the poem. The last two italic words can be changed to mother/daughter, brother/brother, or may speak of a religious relationship. All would fit, and can make the poem universal.

If you’re a writer, keep lists. They will help when you need inspiration.
Have a wonderful day.

Point of Return

There is a point on the face of the earth
where a person can’t get farther away
without being closer.

Out there, seas and mountains of our
own creation are positioned between
loved ones, and when each moves,
the magnets of indifference
push the other away.

It’s all science, formula,
quotient, similar poles,
until love refuses twisted logic
and in forgiveness
whispers

Father,

and whispers,

Son.

Mountain Stories

Hey, I hope you’re having a great day. I got up this morning and went birding with some friends. It was a good day, with some suspected birds and some surprises. We had wonderful views of a Blue Grosbeak. One of my friends and I wrote a little book on birding a few years ago, and the darn thing is a steady seller. It just goes to show you that if you have something you love, there just might be a book in it.

I’m in the coffee shop this morning. Couldn’t be this close to town and not have a fresh cranberry muffin and a cup of coffee. So, let me tell you what I was thinking about last night.

I’m concerned that you aren’t writing. So many of my friends are having trouble. Me included. With me it’s usually temporary, and happens when the trout are rising to the fly, and I feel the call of cold streams. I want to encourage you, and I hope you will do the same for me. We are the storytellers. I still believe that if we take away the computer, cell phone, and all the other “stuff” we carry on our belts and in our bags, we aren’t that far from the fire. We are at our best when we’re looking into the flames and telling those stories we’ve heard, while we add our own twist to the mix.

When I was a child I remember family gatherings, and after supper the kids played while the adults gathered around the stove and told the same stories that I’d heard for years. I’d sit on the steps and listen, and when I was older they were the fuel that fed the fires of my imagination.

Last night I was going through my poems that I might use for a reading, and came across the poem I’ll share with you today. There are a lot of stories in the mountains, and one of the special ones for me is the story of Jack-O-Lantern. It’s used to explain the lights that drift through the hills and hollows. Some say it is swamp gas, others say it is something else. In the southern mountains I’ve heard the story of a man who was so mean that when he died and went to hell, the devil gave him an ember and told him to go and start his own place, cause he wasn’t welcome. That’s him in the mountains at night, still looking.

In Kentucky we had another story about two lost men. I’ve always had the story in mind. Many years ago I went back to the place where I was born, and the house was gone, and as I stood there looking at the spring, and the hills where I played, this poem started to form. Maybe you have visited a special place and felt the same as I did on that day. If you have, get that paper out and see where it takes you.
Here’s the poem.



Jack-O-Lantern

In the hollow there is a story.
A tale for children, of a man
whose friend was lost.
He took a lantern, went to find him.
Neither was ever seen again.

On crisp fall nights the light from the
lantern can still be seen
on the Kellen Hollow ridge,
down the slopes of Grave Yard Hill.

It is me.
It is me.

It is me out there scanning the dark,
one hand in front hoping for a warm touch,
the other raised to cast the golden light as far
as a fishing line into the darkness.

It is me looking frantically about while
the children down below are told the story.

It is me.
It is me.

Searching for the family that is no longer there.
Searching for the home that is no longer there.
Searching for the fire that has long since gone out.

It is me.


Robert W. Kimsey

Poems About Home

It’s still raining in the mountains. My dirt road is a stream, and it’s chilly on the porch, so we’ll need to sit by the fire for our session today. All this is just not favorable for writing. Well, maybe it is, but I’ve written enough “dark and dreary” poems for now. Why don’t we just have a cup of tea and talk for a bit?

Have you noticed how many poems and stories there are about where we (writers) came from? I was born in Kellen Hollow in Eastern Kentucky, and when I was around seven we moved to the city. I spent the summers and holidays back roaming the Kentucky hills, and I have dear friends from that time still. I think about those times often, and most of my poems in Paths From the Shawnee Spring are from that era, and about the people I knew.

A friend of mine passed a week or so ago. He was one of those men who became your pal after you met him. I worked in his blacksmith shop in the summer with his son. Well, work is pushing it. I really just manned the broom and ran errands for him, and he fed me. It was a wonderful time, and what a treat to be there when the old men came and gathered around, and told stories about the river, town, and the old ways. Their stories still come to me as poems and prompts.

When the blacksmith shop closed he taught in an industrial arts setting, and did welding jobs to keep his family. He was a special person, and I will miss him.

You’ve known men and women just like him. They will feed your writings if you let them. They have so many stories to whisper to you. I was thinking about him this morning, and I have a poem to share that is about my friend Ellis, and others who went away to make a living, but always had a special love for home.

Kentuckians
for Ellis

How many of us crossed the Ohio for jobs and education,
ate in diners and beer joints while searching for our
own people; making little Kentucky communities
wherever we could? Always living in
South something,
West End something,
Lower something.

How many of us sat and told stories about home after
working double shifts at the shoe factories, or sweated
on assembly lines; used our last dollars for gas so we
could spend a few hours smelling honeysuckle and
visiting around the Sunday table,
before heading back north?

How many of us died in coal mines or driving
gravel trucks down snake-back roads so we could
hang onto a small piece of sacred mountain land
that our kin had fought to keep, after riding flat boats
down a river into the unknown?

How many of us would push the dirt off our faces,
stand up out of our graves, put on our boots and
do it all over again?

All of us who call ourselves Kentuckians would.


Robert W. Kimsey 2008