DAY 18 OF FORTY DAYS OF PRAYER FOR OUR MOUNTAINS

Today, Rev. William Boys and members of the Southeastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, are praying for creation…

A Poem Prayer (or Hymn*) Concerning Mountain-top Removal Coal Mining

by William E. Boys, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

God, whose voice breaks rocks asunder,
Spirit, brooding o'er the deep:
Your good world evokes our wonder,
Beauty that we long to keep.

Yet, weak stewards, wielding thunder,
Blasting, moving, we debase --
With our knowledge oft we plunder,
Wanton, wasteful -- cure our ways.

Mountain people’s spirits plummet;
Hear our prayer; their needs be seen:
Peace be giv'n to mountain summits,
Let their streams run fresh and clean.

Amen.

* Could be sung to any familiar 8.7.8.7 hymn tune fitting a trochee (but not iambic) foot,
some examples drawn from Evangelical Lutheran Worship are:
Galilee, “Jesus Calls Us, O’er the Tumult” 696
Merton, “Hark! A Thrilling Voice Is Sounding” 246
Omni Die, “For the Bread Which You Have Broken” 494
Rathbun, “In the Cross of Christ I Glory” 324
Stuttgart, “Crashing Waters at Creation” 455
The Servant Song, “Will You Let Me Be Your Servant” 659.

 

DAY 17 of the 40 DAYS OF PRAYER FOR OUR MOUNTAINS

December Sunset

Day 17 of the 40 Days of Prayer

from LEAF 

December 18, 2011

Today, Steve Ferguson and members of Community Church, Mountain City, Tennessee, are praying for creation…

O Blessed Christ
Precious treasury of compassion,
Bestower of supreme inner peace,

You who love all beings without exception,
Are the source of happiness and goodness,
Creator of this universe whose speech is supreme, a purifying nectar,
And your love a refuge for all living things.

Lead us to awakening.

With folded hands we turn to you,
Supreme unchanging friend,
We request from the depths of our hearts:

Please give us the light of your wisdom,
To dispel the darkness of our minds
And to heal the destruction of our greed and insensitivity
Towards your delicate creation.

Please nourish us with your goodness,
That we in turn, will nourish all beings
With a bounty of unceasing gratefulness,

Through your compassionate intention,
Your blessings and virtuous deeds,
And a strong willingness to rely on you,

May all the useless destruction of sacred creation cease,
And all happiness and joy return,
To all of God's mountains, rivers and streams.
That all living things be cherished again,
Upon your earth,
And in the hearts of men.

Amen.



LEAF

FIFTY MOUNTAIN WOMEN!

       What a great gathering of women in this anthology edited by Celia Miles and Nancy Dillingham!  And what a great Christmas gathering of several of those writers at the Coffee with the Poets at City Lights Bookstore this past Thursday!  We nearly had standing room only, and I can't credit the Milky Way Cake of my Piece of Cake Laureate poem fame, though the plate was clean by the time we left. The credit belongs to these writers and the two savvy editors who put together a diverse group of voices from 50 Western North Carolina Women Writers.

Books and cake and coffee! It doesn't get any better than this!

For a wonderful post about this anthology, please go to Kaye W. Barley's fine blog, Meanderings and Musings.   Here you will find information for ordering this book, as well as details about the cover artist and the editors.

You can order WOMAN'S SPACES, WOMAN'S PLACES  online from City Lights Bookstore.

Writers who read from their anthologized work are standing behind the editors, Celia Miles and Nancy Dillingham. ( I'm sitting beside Celia.)  They are, from left to right, Beth Moore, Janie Mae Jones McKinley, Marian Gowan, Martha O'Quinn, Jennifer McGaha, JC Walkup, and Glenda Beall.  

Celia and Nancy asked me to begin by reading Peg Rhodes' poem, which I was happy to do, finding it moving and oh so resonant at this stage in my life. Peg was unable to be with us.

TRANSITION

I am older and wiser now.

I have climbed to the peak

Of Transition Mountain

Where footing is rocky and sharp

And the downward view 

Is perilous and real.

Courage, my heart, as you scan

The lonely panorama of Aging.

Make the careful descent

From denial to acceptance

Aware of the wild flowers

Peeping from the crevices.

Adjustment is the order of the day--

And the long nights.

***Peg Rhodes, political activist and humanist, has written poems most of her life.  At ninety, she continues to write and publish.

Janie Mae Jones McKinley reads from her selection,  "On Bear Mountain."  We could all go with her as she remembered walking with her grandfather to Naybin's general store, the aromas of onions, hoop cheese, fertilizer, and oiled wood floors filling our imaginations.  And candy!  She had even brought small bags of old-fashioned penny candy to give to each one of us.

                        JC Walkup chats with Glenda Beall before the program begins.  J.C's towel buying saga left us laughing like school girls, while Glenda's moving poem about her grief after the loss of her husband left us hushed.

Martha O'Quinn, Marian Gowan, and Beth Moore get caffeinated before Celia and Nancy begin their introduction.   Martha's poem gave us imagery to carry home, as good poetry always manages to do.  Marian, a quilter, described a special quilting retreat on the NC coast. (Maybe I should finally take up quilting before it's too late!)  And Beth's lovely recollection a trip to Kenya captured the spirit of the season in a profound and lyrical way.

Jennifer McGaha's "Vampire Run" was hilarious and expertly crafted.  But don't take my word about how good these poems and stories are.

Over the next few days I'll be posting them, or excerpts,  to highlight  that morning's celebration of mountain women's voices.  Keep dropping by to read them.
And order the book for Christmas, if you haven't already.    It's not too late!

COMPOST

A poem for the end of November and yet another year added to my ledger of days.  And in memory of Ruth Stone, who died just hours ago, at the age of 96.  She was and remains a poet who gives me the strength to celebrate an aging woman's vision and imagination.

 Letting  

go, the leaves try
to teach
me a thing or
two yet
about dying
as if I have not
seen enough
of  that falling
away to last
lifetimes of
wondering what if
I crumpled
and fell
to the ground,
who would look
at me, murmuring
oh, what a
graceful
departure, that
old woman floating
so gently
down onto
the compost pile.



from Catching Light, LSU Press

Grave Stone

Primitive gravestone from the 1830's in the Smoky Mountains

          Grave Stone

So that the dead might always

be able to see mountains circled with clouds

and fog, spiraled by hawks and the currents

they ride, we bury each of our gone

ones as high as we can astride hillsides.

We bring to their chiseled names

flowers and muttered words, sometimes

our songs, if our throats have been loosened

from sorrow at last.  We lie down

in the spring grass beside them.  We stand

in the snow, all a'shiver with emptiness.

Summer we scatter our memories

over their slabs,  our dusty hands

opening onto another day's leave taking.

El Dia de los Muertos, or, in our culture, All Souls Day

The second day of November is All Souls Day, or in Mexico and Central America, El Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, when our gone ones are honored with candles, their favorite foods, and memories of their lives with us.   My sister SW Georgian, Glenda Council Beall, remembers her kinfolk in this poem that seems a fitting expression of All Souls Day.   The closing line, "closed under sod upon a quiet hill" rings with the voices of the Romantic poets I love.   Glenda now lives in the WNC mountains, like me, over in Hayesville, where she has been active in the NC Writers Network West and now has her own writing circle (see below).  Her blog sites are well worth visiting.   

Stop the Trees from Growing

Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again,

but I came here today, to where Mother nurtured

my spirit and where Daddy kept the roof over my head;

where the fire warmed my bed at night, when winter winds

howled ‘round the corners of the old frame house

when this flat farm with ponds and pines was home.

It’s not the buildings all torn down, the homes of friends

that now hold dreams of families I don’t know ─ it is

the trees.

Nothing stopped the trees from growing, growing ever taller,

till they dwarfed the house, the barn, the back yard,

now a tiny garden towered over by  a lilac tree

a pear tree and one giant oak.

I traveled from what is and has been home for fifteen years,

to visit that which was, but is not home anymore.

Like you, Thomas Wolfe, I can’t go home again.

That place I once called home is gone.

Forever gone, except in memories that linger like lazy chimney smoke

spiraling through my mind, thoughts that surge a yearning deep within

to hear the laughing voices, see the kindly eyes – stilled voices, loving eyes,

closed under sod upon a quiet hill.

Glenda Beall grew up in southwest Georgia where the land is flat and the horizon green pines. Her home is now in western North Carolina where she feels she has always belonged. Her poetry chapbook, Now Might as Well be Then, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2009. Her poetry has appeared in Kakalak, 2009 Anthology of North Carolina Poets, as well as literary journals, Main Street Rag, Appalachian Heritage, and online journals, Wild Goose Poetry Review and Future Cycle Poetry. She is director and owner of Writers Circle, a studio fin Hayesville, NC for writing and writers. She also teaches at the John C. Campbell Folk School and Tri-County Community College.

Glenda Council Beall

www.profilesandpedigrees.blogspot

www.glendacouncilbeall.blogspot.co

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ALL HALLOWS

These powerful days around the Celtic New Year have always pulled at my soul.  Today is All Saints Day or All Hallows.  I remember a poem of Louise Gluck's that I loved many years ago.  I'd say it's haunted me ever since I first read it and remains a favorite, although I've found her later work less compelling.  My sequence HALLOWS follows Gluck's poem.  This was written for my grandmother, who is the "saint" in the second section;  the third honors All Souls Day, also known as El Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico and Central America.  For All Souls Day (tomorrow), I will share a poem by my friend Glenda Beall, who lives in Hayesville, North Carolina


ALL HALLOWS

Even now this landscape is assembling. The hills darken. The oxen Sleep in their blue yoke, The fields having been Picked clean, the sheaves Bound evenly and piled at the roadside Among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises: This is the barrenness Of harvest or pestilence And the wife leaning out the window With her hand extended, as in payment, And the seeds Distinct, gold, calling Come here Come here, little one And the soul creeps out of the tree. Louise Gluck    Hallows 1.              These leaves at my window, death-speckled black oak and blood-maple, fall to the earth into which she was sealed, leaving me to imagine I see through the hollows  of what were her eyes how another day  breaks on the backs of the scrub pines that stand up to welcome it. 2.         She was no saint. She never fasted, and if she prayed,  I never heard her aside from the Lawsy she uttered as down she sank onto the dark of the chamber pot  while I tried to be sleeping. She stirred up the fire to a roar every morning and beat the dough smooth, shoved it into the oven to bake and be eaten. When I hear Pavarotti  sing Panis Angelicus,  I see her hands deep in the dough bowl, and I hear the fire in the stove rumble, I hear her clucking and sighing, she who could never on this earth deliver unto any table a dry piece of cornbread, whose old-fashioned cakes that lay solid as flesh on the  plates put to shame every paper-thin slice of the town-ladies’ angelfood cakes. Any honest- to-god  angel  would have preferred them, a dollop of whipped cream atop every thick slice and after that, oh,  just a touch of  her Christmas divinity. 3.            Los Muertos.  The dead. They are out there this morning,  in the woods with the busy  squirrels  laying up treasures on earth,  this  heaven of acorns and walnuts. This granary. These last dawns before the leaves go, I wake early to watch from the window my  dead ones out there in the woods leaf by  leaf come to rest on the ground  where at last they have nothing  to say beyond what’s meant  to lie on the earth and be claimed by it. from Coming To Rest, LSU Press