Used to, the mountain and waterfall

were a place of wonder.

Amicalola, the Cherokee called it,

Tumbling Water,

Childhoods spent climbing, climbing,

mist kissing our faces.

Listening to the flowing until we reach

the top

of the falls.

Looking out over pristine mountains

Seeing an array, blue green, hunter, sage, olive,

Or yellow, red, orange and brown, in Fall,

Ripe persimmon sweet tart upon my tongue.

Learning the sharp scent

and acrid bite of long leaf pine,

Eastern hemlock green and lush

in spite of winter’s chill.

I spy leafless cracking limbs

painting their puzzle pattern

against the sky,

all vast, beautiful,

primeval.

.

And then

roads came;

their presence so innocuous.

Deer path become wagon path,

become gravel road.

In due course, the stink of asphalt

lays claim to the land

covering moccasin-worn footpaths

Grading, dozing, paving.

Retirees and millionaires build

MacCabins in the woods

Tesla and Range Rover exchanged

for three-wheeled monsters

gnawing through untamed land.

Stacked logs and three story balconies

Create bizarre juxtapositions

dotting the ridge.

Here, bare trees struggle

on denuded escarpment.

There, blackberry bramble, fern,

flaming wild azalea

are stripped from the land.

Oak, hickory and lace-bark elm

are felled with abandon

to create a better view.

Splitting calico canopy

so lights of play houses

glow across blue green mountains

like Christmas has come.

Acrid ash of far off factories,

exhaust from grinding chicken trucks

and logging trucks

and eighteen wheelers

spewing their noxious roadside poison

labor up the steep, curving arteries

to highways(Too near! Too near!)

Once majestic, life-giving,

a slowly dying forest becomes

a grotesque blighted reflection

of greed and corruption.

where bear

deer

fox

and raccoon

lie dead on the asphalt

struck down by too fast cars

racing, racing

curve and incline.

Dreaming

reminds me

that I know a secret

the secret of life itself.

pressing my ear

to wavy bark

listening to the lullaby

that sweet gum sings.

No need

for death and destruction.

Listen, listen it sighs

Hear my secret.

Remember childhood,

acorn cap tea cups

and dandelion salads.

Breathe in earthy scents of loam

and hemlock and honeysuckle.

Wonder in the green gold chrysalis

of a monarch

the shell of the cicada

Drink from clear streams,

mica, gold, and quartz

sparkling beneath.

Dream of a tomorrow when

buildings crumble,

stone chimneys fall

Where all that is left

are sprouting white pine

and voracious kudzu vine.

Tomorrow will come;

when tumbling waters

from mountain peaks

require that the young climb

until they reach the top

and are breathless

with the new-born sacred wonder of it all.

KSA

Photo by Richard Darrington on Unsplash

Sounds of rock and roll

murmured introduction

frantic grabs for happiness

among the bottles and smoke.

Faces peering,

eyes speaking,

wordless, imbued,

the language of desire.

Shadows of eyes,

fading in frenzy of drink.

Echo cunning promises

evening passion,

and no tomorrows.

The cacophony of sound

drowning loneliness

and yearning

in this feel-good

be-no-good

just-for-tonight

place.

Credits roll, the screen

Suddenly dark

~. ~

Afternoon sun kissing

a still-dappled fawn

with speckled gold,

romps and kicks

in unfettered delight

near a pine-sheltered arbor

of wisteria and honeysuckle

vines, sweet and supple.

There, the white-masked doe,

five years a visitor

to the maternity ward safety

of an urban yard

folds loose-limbed legs

Chews straws

Of acuba leaves,

while mossy antlered bucks

six of them, and handsome

in strength and agility

race below,

unseeing

to drink

at a park-side stream.

Anticipating their return,

from the bay window

Untamed desires

unfolding before me,

more beautiful

than all the machinations of man.

I’ve never been a drinker, really. There’s too large a price to pay for falling in love with alcohol, but oh, that’s song made me want to drink and forget so much.

I was in college, away from parental restrictions and free to be me. Only me was a duck out of water, neither rich enough to hang with the in crowd, accepted enough to be in the sorority bunch or, to my mother’s eternal chagrin straight laced enough to want to hang with the Independent fraternities and sororities- future preachers and their prim and proper future mates.

My roommate was a Kentucky Woman type of girl. She was usually gone, off with the Wild Bunch. You knew how to recognize her Pack - girls with heavily lined eye makeup, bright glistening lipstick - the kind that make every boy want to kiss them, an air of insouciance and smoky-sweet perfume.

The boys, closer to men, leaders of panty raids, and frat party romances who had exercised their passions with the girls from whom they had stolen those strips of lace and nylon in pastels, daring black or scandalous red.

They were kind that drove fast, faster down back roads and highways, their only purpose to escape the Draft Board’s call. They knew they would turn out to be the eternal student or the ones that reported to Army recruiters, their draft cards in hand. They were terrified and their foot was heavy on the accelerator.

They knew before they left that they, most of them, wouldn’t come home again, or if they did, sometimes mentally, sometimes physically they would never be the same.

What was it like to be eighteen, nineteen, twenty and to know you might be unable to return to the pleasures of Cherry, Cherry or the rollicking rhythms of Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show?

Anyway, to return to Neil and Red, Red Wine, I’d just learned to drink. A group of us would go to a wonderful bar in the basement of a downtown building. There, the bartender would mix potions for underaged girls, always sweet drinks with no strong smell or taste of alcohol, just a tasty trip to paradise in a glass. There, I learned to sip Pink Ladies and an occasional Pina Colada and then there was, of course, the occasional glass of wine.

We thought ourselves ever so lucky. We had a student from Hong Kong who was always our great and generous host of these adventures. Rumor was that his father was richer than Croesus and wielded a good bit of influence all the way across the ocean.

We were never arrested , never stopped even as our giggling gaggle tripped back to our cars, stumbled occasionally as our feet tangled with the cracks that rose up to meet us in the broken sidewalk.Such delicious and devilish delights to this girl from a teetotaling household!

My mother who taught me everything I knew and didn’t know about drinking read to me her own type of story a cautionary tale

“You are coming to woo me, but not as of yore,
When I hastened to welcome your ring at the door;
For I trusted that he who stood waiting me then,
Was the brightest, the truest, the noblest of men,
Your lips, on my own, when they printed "Farewell,"
Had never been soiled by the "beverage of hell;"
But they come to me now with the bacchanal sign,
And the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine."

"Lips That Touch Liquor" by George W. Young

Ah yes, what a lesson! She once attended a very elegant affair at the Cherokee Town Club where a waiter with a try full of temptation kept asking her if she’d like a cocktail. She finally smiled at him, saying “why yes! Shrimp please!”

She was so proud of her retort. Unfortunately, it didn’t work very well for me as I sat in a smoky bar in the bowels of Macon Georgia. I drank, yeah, but mostly sipped on Southern Heaven, brown and fizzy, tickling my nose, Asa Candler’s fortune maker, said to have cocaine in the original formula or maybe it’s just a story. I loved it (still do) poured over crushed ice. That’s what was meant to be the drink of the designated driver back then.

I’d had a crush on a guy who scarcely seemed to see the drab, mousy haired girl with equally drab, mousy outfits. No madras skirts, Bass Weejuns, saddle oxfords,John Romain handbags, just . . .mousy.

He was between girlfriends. He encouraged me to hang out with him. He teased me. I flirted back. I drew closer and tilted my head. He kissed me. And then he laughed, as did the rest of his group of friends. Do you know how it feels when your heart dies the first time?

I've had it to here
Bein' where love's a small word

That night, red, red wine sure tasted sweet. Ripple, Mateus Chianti, Boones Farm and of course, Mad Dog. I don’t remember which was my choice. And when your heart hurts and you can see no way forward to attaining your (or were they your mama’s) ambitions and the world seems terribly cruel, you can sometimes find that place of solace in a gorgeous young history professor’s apartment.

"I am"... I cried
"I am"... said I
And I am lost and I can't
Even say why
Leavin' me lonely still

There along with other sycophants, I listened to Neil, Leonard Cohen and Joan Baez and drank wine, alone in the pile of lonely puppy players like me. Blindly searched my way, being held up by some preacher-to-be, back to the dormitory past the dorm mother’s apartment.

Shhhh, no noise! I find my room but first, first, go to the hall phone and called the local radio station and ask the DJ to play that song again.

Red, red wine
It's up to you
All I can do, I've done
But memories won't go
No, memories won't go

Amazing what you can remember in a two hour drive back home - to your past.

Neil is one of the most prolific storytellers of my generation. Song after song was, as I learned from the musical, the story of his life. The oral telling of a story, whether sung or spoken has a magical connection to the souls of the listeners. You sing, or you tell and you put all of you, stripped of pretense wrapped in the magic of voice, thin as wrapper on a spring roll

I understand on a gut level that connection between the teller and the audience.

I have been a storyteller for as long as I remember. Standing onstage as a three year old, replacing another little girl - a sick actress and listening to applause for the first time Standing in Piedmont Park, telling the father of a young man I was watching , excellent in his role on a temporary stage in the middle of the park with Lake Clara Meer as a background, that I was a talent agent. I convinced that father, or it seems I did. He smiled and asked for my contact details.

Reciting poetry before fellow students in college lit classes. I loved telling stories because in revealing a part of myself in the words I spoke, those tales became good and true. They passed on the wisdom nestled deep in the words.

Hallelujah, brothers
Halle-hallelujah, I said brothers
now you got yourself two good hands
and when your brother is troubled
You gotta reach out your one hand for him
'cause that's what it's there for
and when your heart is troubled
You gotta reach out your other hand
reach it out to the man up there
'cause that's what He’s there for

… Take my hand in yours

My stories let me share my heart, sometimes disguised behind by a veil of fantasy and make believe, sometimes as authentic and real as I was able to make it. Was it my story or a fable? Only I know for certain, most of the time

As a storyteller, I have experienced the magic and wonder of story many times. Telling stories to preschoolers or college students and watching body language as it shifts from indifference or excitement to that wonderful leaning in that tells me that they are enraptured by the tale I am telling.

Conducting a performance through the airwaves of a local radio station with the same passion I once embraced in Neil and his songs, only to have people stopping me in the middle of a store because they recognized my voice or telling me about heading to an appointment, arriving at their destination, sitting in the car until I have finished the story. Together we created Connection. Union. Community.

It's a beautiful noise
Made of joy and of strife
Like a symphony played
By the passing parade
It's the music of life

Someone once told me that if you tell the story well, the storyteller disappears and what is left is an intimate soul connection, deeper than any Instagram, TikTok, Facebook post or Tweet could possibly create. It reminds you where you came from. It dances in your memories, just out of reach like a floating dandelion ray.

You feel it pulling at your gut. You feel it connected to the earth and all that is. And in that feeling is the essence of community. That thing that tied me in college to all the other woe-filled listeners of a radio station’s track. That thing that as an adult I found that I made people reach out to share our soul connection. It was that thing that made me sway and smile at other concert goers on Sunday.

Stay for just a while
Stay and let me look at you
It's been so long, I hardly knew you
Standing in the door

Stick around. Sit by the fire with me if you’d like. Let’s gaze into the flame. Listen carefully and you may hear connection in story. I think this storyteller has some tales to share. Maybe you can find the connection here that makes you feel a little less alone. That, after all, is the purpose of story. My heart to yours.

Lyrics by Neil Diamond:

Solitary Man

“I Am” . . . Said

Red, Red Wine

Brothers Love’s Traveling Salvation Show

Beautiful Noise

September Morn

Don’t give me botanical names

I’ll never remember them.

I will remember that

Hyacinth’s flowered pillars

Wake my soul,

First scent of fresh earth breaking.

My eyes behold daffodils

A sign of new birth, or

Leprechaun horns or fairies dresses

Redbud so impressed with itself that it blooms up branch

and limbs bend to remind me

To put my ear to her bark

To hear the slow gurgling of sap, rising

And her own unique lesson that

Many small blossoms make

Collective perfection.

The small maple

In my garden bows

To me, its dance

A perfect choreography

Invitation to breathe

And to move

My winter weary bones,.

Lithe and loose,

Floating in the rapids of March wind.

Does the genus really matter?

I say farewell to camellias

The rich reds, pinks, whites

Frilly petals or smooth

Dressed to meet me, smiling,

Sustained me during winter’s chill

Bringing forth memories

Of my mother,

And her mother

Planting, planting

Until their gardens

Were a riot of color and form.

And from that ancestry,

I step forward

To remember

To plant

To grow

Nameless, yet ever named home

.

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.” James Baldwin

Three doe are contentedly bedded down in my backyard. The web of a spider has caught a leafy twig that is slowly twirling. From where I sit, the leaves are magically suspended above the doe’s heads.

Seeing the deer makes me think of the children and mothers of Gaza and Israel, bombs literally seconds from exploding above them.

I am caught in the juxtaposition between beautiful and chaos. There is no peace in Israel. There is no peace in Gaza. There are no deer, peacefully bedded down.

I want to run from the chaos and resume a life where I attend baseball games and cheer for my side. I want to joke with friends about their chosen football team. I cannot. I think about dead babies, riddled with bullets, old men, seeing their entire families murdered in their beds.

“Run,” I think, “Run from the horror and madness of it all. Run before some tiny part of you finds any of it, from either side, acceptable!”

I learned a new term yesterday - empathetic distress. It is defined by professor Trisha Dowling as “the strong aversive and self-oriented response to the suffering of others, accompanied by the desire to withdraw from a situation in order to protect oneself from excessive negative feelings.”

This is not to be mistaken with empathetic concern, which is other-oriented emotion elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of someone in need.

We often express that when a friend experiences grave illness or a death of someone they love. We say “I’m so very sorry.” and then express action by saying things like “Praying that you will be comforted.” Or “My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family”.

I cannot escape from the place in which we now find ourselves. I am caught in the web of emotional distress and I suspect you are too. A government here, shaking on its foundation, weather becoming so strange that the primitive gut quivers unmistakably, and utter destruction in Ukraine, Gaza and Israel.

I want to climb into myself and play music and sing loudly, bake bread, paint, take a very long walk, but I won’t do any of these. I will do the only thing I can. I will write.

This, after a visit to an art gallery.

Holy Land

And from the pulpits come

Bless Israel

Lord, heal Israel

And that is all.

Forty miles of iron wall

Between Gaza mothers

And Jewish mothers

Forty miles of concrete and wire and sensors

Demand that Gaza children

Keep their place

Behind a wall so high

they will never see the other side.

Does God only live on one side of the war?

Do the babes of Gaza hold less value

In the eyes of the world?

In Israel, reporters said

they didn’t tell her he died.

Shot in the head

While she comforts her

Newborn babe

This time, they killed the fathers first

A proclamation from the enemy

Fifty years, seventy-five years, two thousand years

The slaughter of babes is the specialty of depravity.

Does poetry and art displayed

Soothe the spirit?

No. Silvered forms, emerging light from an egret

Time on a window, pyramids and rising sun.

Shout perfection while chaos reigns

Abstracts speak sharply of fleeing forms and rising smoke

While the old woman across the way

Gazes in silence

Face filled with resignation.

I come for holy comfort, but find none here.

Hell’s Door

What remains of the souls of men

who slaughters babies?

How can they look into trusting eyes

And sever the head of the innocent?

What soulless anger, what depravity

conjures Satan, calling for

the rape of women

Screaming in terror?

What devil hardens the rod

before it pierces virginity?

What depraved voice

Shouts praises to God

Over a hundred dead and

Dying bodies?

How corrupt must one soul be

to attend to the annihilation

of Sarah’s line, of Hagar’s?

Both bear seeds from Abraham.

One is not more precious

Than the other in

The eyes of a loving God

You who revel in such butchery

remember this -

There is no comfort in hell

May you rot there eternally.

White Oak, Passing

How long ago did you birth yourself on primal floor?

What is being built will never last as long as you.

When it is finally half your age, or less,

will it be torn down, plowed under?

It was, all the same, a small thing

And it will, before long,

go the way of most small things.

It may fall into disrepair

Or be superseded by some temporary grand thing

We cannot assume we have erected a lasting monument

Modest satisfaction that became our due

after its completion.

Did moonbeams dance at your awakening,

while nameless, numberless stars

peek down from ageless heights?

Old tree, you have been tossed and bent

by wild winds, summer rains,

and now carrying the weight of sorrow

on your still strong limbs

You sing your mourning song

while Oconee bells bloom.

While the foreman shouts

Cut it down!

KSA 9-4-23

Where do you feel your grief for the earth and its systems?

Premature, Dying

My grief sits in mental abstract,

but resides in my solar plexus firey orange

a shot to the gut, manifesting itself like a mangy dog

with ulcers, like the acidy gnawing chewing of a wharf rat

of pollution that fills my lungs,

crystalline particles, perfect geometric proportions

Deadly virus astride their backs,

a product of city living.

I try to ignore it, but it returns unbidden

when I see streams filled with old grocery bags

and rotting clothing that washed here

from the homeless camp during the last storm

and red, a young child’s luggage.

I grieve for roads littered with cigarette butts and empty candy wrappers

For mountain lakes, a slick film of oil upon its surface

For names carved into trees

Or paintball splatters

An incongruous blue here

Improper yellow there

Must man always leave his mark?

I am heart-struck.

I keen

How long before nothing virgin remains?

KSA 9-2-23

Fall

Today I miss summer rain showers,

because I know we’re supposed to get some

the radar says we will.

Today I miss the smell of night blooming jasmine,

the scent of my grandmother,

and moon vine that smells like my mother.

and the dandelion and clover that belongs to me

Today I miss the new green of spring

Today I miss the quietness of winter

the whippoorwill’s call.

I miss my young bones,

that played a summer’s day away.

It was such a good thing, that playing.

It was time when responsibility

belonged to the grown ups,

certainly not to me,

unless you counted chores

Today I miss hotdogs at the baseball field,

swims in our man-made lake.

The smell of falling leaves

Precursors of my birth day

Standing at the cusp of

my seventy fourth year

I am part of all around me.

Today, today, I’m missing me.

KSA 8-3-23