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April is “National Poetry Month,” as was declared by the Academy of American Poets in 1996. It was established to celebrate and honor poets who they felt had offered an “integral role in our culture and that poetry matters.”
In the last 27 years, the Academy of American Poets reported “it has become the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers., marking poetry’s important place in our lives.”
Since I am a poet, I thought I would share a few poems that I have written. I wrote this poem more than 30 years ago, and the older I get the more meaningful it becomes. It is titled “A Memory of Fall.”
“I walked amidst the falling leaves as they came tumbling down, with childhood memories close at hand, a tear fell to the ground. For once I played beneath such trees and frolicked in the sun, I remember well the games we played, I loved them every one.
“The scent of pine waifed through the air, around the needled earth, appraising grounds of shady lanes, a fortune is its worth. Upon a log I sat and dreamed of a younger, carefree time, when life was like a passage through storybooks and rhyme.
“The years have swiftly counted by for time is not to store. Through loving eyes you look around and wish you had seen more. For the tender times of childhood games will melt away like snow, and like the dust of ancient winds, we know not where it goes.”
This poem was in a book of poetry that I published in 1984 and titled Rainy Days:
“Rainy evenings bring to mind, the days when I was small, playing with all my cousins and the memories I recall. We’d hear the storm and build dirt dams in the path the rain would take. Then sit behind a screened in door to see whose dam would break.
“From the Sears and Roebuck catalog with our paper dolls we’d play, building a house from the kindling box till the rain would go away. We buried hubcaps in the sawdust pile to catch the drops of rain and float wood blocks with stick men, some wondered if we were sane.
“At the bottom of the Tatham Gap, we had a lean-to made, just tiny logs nailed on trees with an oil cloth roof we weighed. The house isn’t standing anymore, the sawdust pile has decayed, and all that is left of our lean-to are the rusty nails displayed. Now time has changed that beaten path where children used to play and like dirt dams, the sands of time will wash our lives away.”
The last poem is about an old house on Junaluska Road, titled “The Mosteller Home Place.”
“The old house stood abandoned on a hill not far away, I couldn’t help but wonder the memories of yesterday. I know the house held pleasure though the logs had cracked to peel, their color grey and barren, that is how it made me feel.
“The room it was so empty, so dusty, cold and bare, with a rusty old cook stove and one broken down chair. The atmosphere was gloomy, but the sweetest thing of all, I imagined a lacy covering in the cradle by the wall. How many children had it fed from
the garden in the back? How many rains were sheltered in this deserted little shack?
“How many yards were woven upon the rotted loom? How many rugs were scattered throughout the living room? It probably saw some family quarrels and a lot of sickness, too, I saw then from the rocky soil, the hardships that they knew. In the barn the plow had rusted, ‘twas placed in an empty stall, and the old horses bridle was just hanging on the wall.
“Once they made it merry draped beneath the cornice square, tattered curtains and broken panes, left a lonely image there. If only this house could tell us, what all we would like to know, of families, friends, and stories, maybe a hundred years ago.”
Kandy Barnard is a columnist for the Cherokee Scout. To talk about the Andrews Valley, call her at 361-3268 or email kandybarnard@gmail.com.