This fossil
embedded, merged
cannot break free
of the rock
on its own.
If fossils could feel
this one would
cry for freedom
simply to exist
independent
of ancient stone.
Merged
in a by-gone era
this once living spirit
now bears elements
of another.
What outside force
could free the fossil
without breaking it?
Without destroying the stone ?
Eagle Kind
Have I not given
the best of my years
days of my innocence
pureness of my heart
to you?
Have I not walked through
the Valley of the Shadow of Death
with you
more than once?
More than twice?
Have I not laughed
and cried and prayed
with you
at you
for you?
Will you not
grant me freedom
to fly
to spread my wings
over the world?
To be only
me?
Do you not know
that the cry for autonomy
has little to do
with things you have done
or said
or felt?
This longing
is only about
a need in my soul
a need to soar.
Not a lack
on your part.
No fallacy.
No blame.
No fault.
I am simply
of eagle-kind.
Soaring is what we
are made for.
My love is not diminished
yet, unless, I spread
these wings
I will die
in my nest.
“Every bird needs to fly just once.” From Looking for Pork Chop McQuade
by Nochipa (aka, Darlene)
Pen Shells
Second Place, October 2007
Judged by E. Ethelbert Miller
Tell me what is more beautiful
than strength of a life
well-lived.
My hands, lean and firm,
are scarred by
youthful poverty.
while my sculpted arms,
sinewy and brown,
were chiseled by a farmer’s hoe
and these legs, are solid
and shapely, strong
as trees grown from hill-treading
My wit is sharp
as tobacco spears
from traps of star-dream slayers
while my heart beats steady
for hundreds of children
who listened to my song.
So, now that you know
I am not a T.V. woman-child,
am I less lovely?
Ninety degrees
in dry September fields
all day long I lift
eighty pounds of green.
I am tiger lily dust
moistened from dew within,
my cocoa hair
streaked with caramel strands.
Scarred, calloused hands
twice their age,
touched by manly nails,
hoist these sacred stalks
until sinewy limbs
longing for apple tree shade
send me to drink divine
colorless warmth.
When the sky people
with their glory eyes
peep through the holes
in their velvet blanket
I fall clean
upon fresh sheets
and make love
to my peace.
*NOTE: I spent much of my youth working the tobacco fields of southern Kentucky. The work was hard and at the end of those summer days, especially the ones in September, when the fields were dry and the sky clear blue, there was nothing so inviting as a bath and a bed with clean sheets. For those who have worked the tobacco fields, you know. For those who haven’t, you have this poem to tell you a little of what it was like. This was life in Kentucky when I was young.
