Four Fifteen

Who will volunteer to search yesterday's years for buried slightest traces

Of a people born to be weather-torn from their prized and precious places?

No more can chore of labor's scorn, scar or mar their worry-ridden faces

That rest in peace from harm, wrapped in gentle arms of God's embracing graces, For a torrent bound to drown a culture found its way through golden ages, To wash lives away with torrid tempests fed by unbound river rages.

Who will volunteer to scout today's fears led by dog-sniffed scented traces

Of a people floating on rapid's rafts carrying death on frozen faces?

While stricken scavengers stumble cart-wheels 'cross musty mud-washed lawns, Filling filthy pockets with trinket treasures of the "somewhere up and gone", Magic moments from a trouble's rubble 'cross the sad-tossed curious minds, Seeking meaningful understanding of God's will, drawn dark between fine lines.

Who will volunteer to nurture a nature, proven cruel and most unkind,

While a people's children sob away laughter, after deluge of mankind?

Where crowds of boots stomped flat-foot romps to rowdy Saturday night jamborees, Half-sipped sarsaparilla soda pops strewn atop mountains of piled debris,Shiny shards of shattered mason jars adorn treetops wind-freed to fly,

Weary roots worn-torn defy the storm to stab the tearless cyclops eye.

Who will volunteer to unbury lingering corpses of unforgotten ghosts,

Once glad people who danced to love song romance in kin begotten hosts?

The weary woke singing on Sabbath mornings, crowding sunlit parish pews,

Through stained glass windows, tear-gaze grieved, bereaved epitaph's graveyard news. Life storms wept by their mourning loved ones, overflowed creek banks swelled with sorrows. "Old Rugged Cross" sang their loss and bore aloft their soaked hopes of tomorrows.

Who will volunteer to rebuild years of modest memories fondly cradle-rocked 

As people brought forth worth from the rich furrowed earth a harvest fully stocked?  Now the plow unearths remains, bones washed by pounding rains to rot and rest alone 

In solemn mud bank graves they spend eternal days far from their comfort's home. Stain dirtied curtains flap full fury as lost hopes hurry-drift downstream.

A handmade "Bless this Home" embroidery, no longer cushions night's safe-sleep dreams.

  

Who will volunteer to feed starved years of poverty's meek and meager favors,

Met by a people's care to freely share with others, with friends, with neighbors? 

A handy Country Store sinks ruined into a rubble on boggy ground,

Penny candy sticks in lumps of icky licorice and soggy sweet horehound,

Clumped gobs on dank planks split-splintered waste on a damp sawdust windswept floor Scraped by shovels, raped by whisk brooms, that gaping workers leaned against the door.

  

Who will volunteer to bind the beaten heart that bleeds tears of travail's pain,

Healing people battered, walking wounded, that they may rise to thrive again?

Broken clock hands no longer tick moments, tock seconds, or chime happy years, Fiercely flung from a wall, time can no more recall its rusted, crusted gears. Forever will it scream four-fifteen, when deep night fell into a hell-drenched day. Fate's wicked whisper turned mean, spoke the name, "Helene", then churned men's lives away.

P.S. Colley

Nov. 2024

Songs of Appalachia

 

The Accuracy of When

When the Stella Magnolia leaves

are all on the ground, I will know

fall has ended.  The melancholy complete,

the time of bare, naked trees reaching

up, digging down, ready to show their

winter strength – the holders of the dreams

of spring, a certain prophecy.  

That time is not now, nor will it repeat

with any exactitude of what has gone

before.  Consider the divine,

the nature of nature’s beauty,

furious storms, the afterglow.

Then speak what’s been shown in silence,

the only language fit for what cannot

be spoken of but known.  No belief, no

argument, but knowing “this is this,

that is that” and no fear to live

what’s been given in the way 

a leaf falls to the ground,

the way that feels like the lips

of your beloved on your lips,

that sigh escaping just before the kiss.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Message in the Sand

Endless, timeless, barren, desolate desert,

Void of dewdrops precious minute blessings:

Our world, or His? It matters not.

As thirst's dry draughts tempt strangest thoughts

To wither; wishful, meager unseen visions.

Promises of tomorrow's rain smolder in sundrenched air,

Wisped away until they are and care no more.

So cruel crossing that bleak demon of a land,

Falling, Crawling, sifting momentary sands

Through hateful outstretched, tight clenched, hand;

One heavier foot tromping, mercilessly following another

Into that hopeless, helpless emptiness.

Now we become bleached, baked carcasses

Weak, weather-worn to leather. 

Can there be pain where there is no feeling?

Yet hearts still beat each bead of salty sweet sweat,

Regret no solitary tear left to shed.

Together tired, trudging toward illusively

Faint, fragrant horizons of faux fantasy mirages.

Is there sanity in seeking, in searching wanton, wild wilderness

Until all hope's lost?  Wandering aimlessly,

Stumbling upon one living, eluding treasure.

One pure pleasure amidst the fatal doom,

A Mojave painted cactus, bright with bloom.

Some slight strength surges, as a happier hope emerges,

Drawn Deep into parched earth, roots shoot

Down to drown in life's clean, clear blood.

Hastily hand in sand scrawls each awkward word:

"I go ahead to seek an oasis."

-P.S. Colley

Rev. Nov. 2024

Mother Nature's Lullaby

Mother Nature's lullaby sings to me of earth and sky,

Forest floors alive with creatures,

Creep, eat, sleep midst timeless features

Like cracks and crevices, wrinkled, poxed.

Huge stacks of heavy, solemn rocks

Lie afoot grasses, bushes, then tree

Roots searching, reaching to grow free.

Their withering branches, slithering vines

Criss-cross the mossy tall tree lines

Where squirrels and owls on boughs alone

Find nests full, restful, peaceful homes.

Twirping, chirping, shrill, trill birds,

Join frog choirs, cricket underworlds.

Melodic chants of plants and beasts

Hum alive to spy poor moonlight feasts. 

Strange things with wings that rustle nights

Cruise o'er and soar such hush still flights.

Fair firelight flickers fanned by breezes,

Embers fade and shadow teases

Low tired eyes that droop, dawn deep......

Mother Nature lulls me to sleep.

 

P.S. Colley

May 1989

Potts Creek Retreat

Rev. Nov. 2024

Songs of Appalachia

Suddenness Is a Gradual Process

For over an hour, I’ve been watching

the sun arrive at its height of suddenness.

How gradually that summit is achieved.

How constant the sun in its cornucopia nuances

of dawn.  Maybe the first and last sermon 

we see, the fumbling after words a kind 

of incantation the day accepts as a prayer,

the night hymn forming in the west.

"And now we wait.”

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com/

BELOW THE HULL: STRAVROS NIARCHOS

Enjoy the Mediterranean light before sunset.

Talk among the crashing waves with equal abandon.

Dive in the sea with architect friends.

Why not enjoy both worlds of land and water at the edge of Athens?

I depart from the present on the ship;

travel the stairs to dinner,

hold woodgrain rail for balance.

I ran back to the upper deck of the Stavros Niarchos

in time to draw sailboats cruising on.

The waves are strong and full, 

reaching Piano's building;

Athen’s investment in the numbing sea, 

book volumes shift, swell, sink.

Find the ladder, slide it over,

reach the uppermost books before the hull cracks.

Library shelves float already on the perimeter; 

glass rails are invisible.

In both a library and a theater, the music rooms are alive 

with silence. Ensconced in the red velvet seats, 

every door opening surprises the senses, 

delightful, polished, curving wood. 

In the ballerina's box, the dancers unfold themselves, 

crane animals about to fly.

Smooth, not slick, like walking over a wave-crusted beach,

step aboard, the marble floor is sand.

The glass cantilever, the boom, extends the craft:

Five stories perched between the city and sea docks. 

What the water offers as new life, the building gives too.

Siggrou Avenue is the deck; 

the Greek street lifts at the bow and meets the water.

A building never visited becomes familiar. 

Everyone sees the ocean the same way, running to meet the waves. 

Over the port of Piraeus, the wire pulleys hold down the sail. 

The lines clank as the building moves -the sea view!

The aquamarine sky floats just below the surface. 

Cruising below the ship's vessel, 

the roof is the glistening white hull. 

There is great joy in finding the architect's secret. 

The Piano Workshop gave Athens a new building, 

a new Agora to mimic a cruise liner. 

I arrive at the upper deck and my friend grabs the rail, 

her long sun-streaked hair blowing to realize:  

This building is sailing.

-Kellie Cole

Kellie Cole is a licensed architect practicing in West Virginia who teaches architecture at Fairmont State University. Kellie's poetry has been published in Whetstone, Fairmont State University's publication, Voices From the Attic, and River and Stone Anthology of Short Stories.

Early

The death of my father is nearly a month

away – 31 years.  The haunting of longing

has begun.  The end of his life was nothing

like the fullness of it.  How apropos he

died in the fall, his favorite time of the year.

What do I miss most?   Perhaps the way he clasped

his hands together after the good-bye hug and kiss 

on our necks as if another victory – a triumph of love –

had been won.  The visitation this year, early, has begun.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com