family | V E R S E and I M A G E

Archive for the ‘family’ Category

Girl Filling the Sky – Melissa McEver Huckabay

Posted in family, Imagery, tagged Cider Press Review, family, Girl Filling the Sky, Melissa McEver Huckabay, nature photography, poetry on September 11, 2026| Leave a Comment »

[ 2 poems from the winner of the

2024 Cider Press Review Book Award ]

Partial Eclipse

Hear me out: that which you call death

I remember. – Louise Gluck

The morning light is dew:

soon the sun will crescent away.

The windows of our house let

pieces of light in. Pines and oaks

undulate in the wind. Our ground

turns yellow green in shadow.

I remember my passage here:

from one house to another, neighbors

who speak and those who are silent.

Black-eyed Susans fading away,

fields turning brown in summer.

Highways leading us toward home.

My mother is here, her suffering

a slow movement across the sun.

I want to make a well of myself.

Find the water, cup my hands,

ask her to drink. Turn the soil

into something soft. tell her:

Mama, you are so clear to me—

let’s push away this swollen moon.

Melissa McEver Huckabay

❀ ❀ ❀

Summer

For Lynn

Wasn’t our skin sticky

in the air conditioning,

wasn’t your dark hair

smooth, your lipstick

leaving a red ring

on your wine glass? Weren’t we

all laughing while I chopped

serrano peppers into tiny

green slits, while we poured

more merlot? Didn’t we drink

so much that we started singing,

and didn’t you cover your mouth

while you giggled, like you always

do? Wasn’t this just the other day,

just the other August, before the sunset

turned bronze on South Padre,

before we all moved away,

before you walked down the aisle

in your beaded dress, your face

gleaming and pink—

before the hospital,

before the cancer,

before the call?

Melissa McEver Huckabay

❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀

What good is anything? No, this one right here. She stops beside the nature trail and points, the juicy stem tinged pink, the flowers as little like flowers as can be. What good? Will it taste like ripe berries? Cure cancer? Stop my heart beating before I finish chewing? Who knows?

And why even care enough to answer? Although I will try. Maybe sidestep, throw in some muse about plant communities, or defer to Cherokee ethnobotany, or mumble a longish word like pollinators. What good is any of that?

All I know is that on this morning a brief breeze rises and a dozen fairies fly. They pirouette and then they’re gone. I could tell you that just below the hill the burnweed has gone to seed. Nothing special, never any grand inflorescence, only stalky climb into light then bent brown by autumn. I could consider only that and let it go.

But for a few seconds against the backdrop of the maple’s first red-limned transfiguration, poised on the slow transit of noon to afternoon, those airy wisps, those ephemera, those dancers winglit by sunflash — my God.

❀

Girl Filling the Sky is the winner of the 21st annual Cider Press Review Book Award, 2024. Melissa McEver Huckabay teaches high school English in Cypress, Texas. Her poems weave through the generations: a grandmother widowed by war, a mother scarred by deceit, a little girl abandoned by her father and forever imagining his return. And yet the warp of loss is patched and filled by the weft of love, sometimes smoldering, sometimes radiant. In the title poem, the writer is four years old and imagines she can fly from her second story balcony. Isn’t our life meant to fill the sky?

https://ciderpressreview.com/product/girl-filling-the-sky/

❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀

Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:

. . . . . every Friday I present one or more poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;

. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.

If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:

https://griffinpoetry.com/about/

If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.

If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to

COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM

Thanks again for joining the conversation.

— Bill

Read Full Post »

As His Name – Ron Rash

Posted in family, Imagery, poetry, tagged family, nature photography, NC Poets, poetry, Ron Rash, Southern Appalachians, Southern writing on July 10, 2026| 3 Comments »

Violet Wood Sorrel, Oxalis violacea

. .

[ 3 poems from New and Selected ]

. .

Barbed Wire

. .

New strung, it sparks a live wire

when sun hits right, and can be

thumbed like guitar string, its tune

pure country twang, but given

enough time rain rusts metal,

fence posts wobble like loose teeth,

barbed wire burrows in laurel

and goldenrod before found

by fishermen or hunters.

As I found out once, deep in

the Smokies when something latched

to my calf—coil of old strands

not quite elemented back

into ground ore, and though I searched

no chimney-spill or hearthstone,

no sign but rusty fence-thorns

of one whose hammer tapped out

a claim on this land traveling

through bright lines from post to post,

traveling time to a moment

one man’s tenuous hold on

the earth snagged like memory

surfaced long after, time-dulled,

but still able to draw blood.

. .

Ron Rash

. .

❀ ❀ ❀

. .

Plowing on Moonlight

I rose with the moon, left the drowsy sheets,

my nine months wife singing in her sleep,

left boots on the floor, overalls and hat

scarecrowing a bedpost so I could plant

my seeds with just a plow between

the earth and me, my pale feet deep

in the ridged wake where I labored,

gripped the handles like a divining rod,

my eyes closed to the few stars out.

All night I plowed, beard budded by frost,

chest nippled, my breath blooming white,

and felt in me the sway of the sea,

rain’s fall and soak, the taproot’s thrust,

the cicada’s winged resurrection.

I opened my eyes to dawnlight,

left my field and lay with my wife,

warming as I pressed against her body,

my hand listening to her waxing belly.

. .

Ron Rash

. .

Common Milkweed, Asclepias syriaca

. .

❀ ❀ ❀

. .

The Exchange

. .

Between Wytheville, Virginia,

and the North Carolina line,

he meets a wagon headed

where he’s been, seated beside

her parents a dark-eyed girl

who grips the reins in her fist,

no more than sixteen, he’d guess

as the come closer and she

doesn’t look away or blush

but allows his eyes to hold

hers that moment their lives pass.

He rides into Boone at dusk,

stops at an inn where he buys

his supper, a sleepless night

thinking of fallow fields still

miles away, the girl he might

not find the like of again.

When dawn breaks he mounts his roan,

then backtracks, searches three days

hamlets and farms, any smoke

rising above the tree line

before he heads south, toward home,

the French Broad’s valley where spring

unclinches the dogwood buds

as he plants the bottomland,

come night by candlelight builds

a butter churn and cradle,

cherry headboard for the bed,

forges a double-eagle

into a wedding ring and then

back to Virginia and spends

five weeks riding and asking

from Elk Creek to Damascus

before he finds the wagon

tethered to the hitching post

of a crossroads stone, inside

the girl who smiles as if she’d

known all along his gray eyes

would search until they found her.

She asks one question, his name,

as her eyes study the gold

smoldering there between them,

the offered palm she lightens,

slips the ring on herself so

he knows right then the woman

she will be, bold enough match

for a man rash as his name.

. .

Ron Rash

. .

❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀

. .

Ron Rash will take you there. He will take you deep into to the forest where the unvoiced past may suddenly reach up from the earth and bite your leg. Into the night where moonlight unveils dreams and deep desires. Up a lonesome mountain holler where one of his own kinsmen once scratched to farm a living. Even deeper, farther, he will carry you into generations long grown cold but where a story of his early ancestor can still wring a warm and sudden smile.

. .

This collection, Ron Rash’s New and Selected, covers decades of his writing but hundreds of years of settlement and stories, of life and death in the southern Appalachians. Each poem is the flare of a match that lights a lantern to limn a face, a moment, another turning point in another life. A history book might teach you about the Tennessee Valley Authority and farmers displaced by lakes filling behind its hydroelectric dams, but these poems will teach your heart how it felt to live on that land and watch it go under. The poems will teach you that poverty in possessions is not poverty of the soul. They might teach you that following your God can still involve some wrestling matches. Most of all, these poems connect – they tell one expansive enlarging straggling and struggling story of people and families each one of us is a part of. We are a part of these stories if we call ourselves Americans, and especially Southerners. Or if we just call ourselves human beings.

. .

❀

. .

Ron Rash – POEMS, New and Selected is available at Bookshop.org.

. .

Also by Ron Rash at Verse and Image:

https://griffinpoetry.com/2026/04/27/poetry-and-earth-awe/

. .

❀

NOTE: you can share three additional poems by Ron Rash at the sequel to today’s post, from July 17, 2026;

https://griffinpoetry.com/2026/07/17/direction-ron-rash/

Common Buckeye, Junonia coenia

. .

❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀

. .

Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:

. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;

. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.

. .

If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:

. .

https://griffinpoetry.com/about/

. .

If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.

. .

If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to

. .

COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM

. .

Thanks again for joining the conversation.

. .

– Bill

. .

. .

Read Full Post »

Communion – Grey Brown

Posted in family, Imagery, tagged Communion, family, Grey Brown, imagery, nature photography, NC Poets, poetry, Redhawk Publications, Southern writing on June 19, 2026| 2 Comments »

[ 3 poems by Grey Brown ]

Costume

I am five, maybe six,

and my mother

is taking pictures of me

in my costume.

I stand statue still

before the hearth,

sneakers on,

plastic pumpkin in hand,

ready.

I have chosen a princess dress

and a witch hat.

I like the way I look in purple

and pink, but I need the hat.

My teenage brother walks by

and announces that

I cannot be both

a princess and a witch.

Because of the hat

I am bold and remind him

that he is too old for Halloween

and that no matter what I am,

witch, princess or sister,

he will not be getting candy.

My mother does not say a word

but cocks an eyebrow

the way she does

when she is reading a good book.

Then, as a princess,

I bow.

Grey Brown

❀ ❀ ❀

On Belief

My daughter learns of constellations,

the unfinished dot-to-dot

of Andromeda and Cassiopeia,

the poor mother and baby bears

headless, missing paws.

She dreams of planets

and their rings,

adoring moons

that spin and sing.

Stargazing, we find our way

to a dark, empty field

to view the comet.
.

My daughter imagines

bold strokes, a ball of light

with a vivid, streaming tail,

cartoon crisp and lively colored.

But she finds only

a blurred hairball of dust and ice.

more chaos than divine creation,

at best, the whorled thumbprint

of some god, preoccupied.

Grey Brown

❀ ❀ ❀

I Hate October

I just seem to lose family and friends

as the light angles down—

my grandmother to colon cancer,

the neighbor’s daughter

who just overdosed,

my dearest friend tucked in a shawl,

the book falling from his hand.

They all seem to let go,

as daylight wanes

and a cool hand disturbs the earth.

I talk more to my mother

at this time of year,

but she is of little help,

so bad at living herself,

her drinking and smoking.

She passed in the fall

of her fifty-ninth year.

She was an ardent fan

of witches and ghosts,

pumpkins and gourds.

I still decorate for her

trying to do my best

with the darkness.

Grey Brown

❀ ❀ ❀

Last week I caught a portion of an interview with an avant garde artist describing his latest installation. The interviewer asked what message the artist intended his art to convey. The artist replied, “A bad poem descends into meaning.” Well, that is certainly one statement that has opted not to descend into meaning. What is a good poem, then? Incomprehensible?

Maybe a good poem does hold meaning, but close, cupped in its hands. The reader, craning for a glimpse, is encouraged to open his or her own hands and discover what meaning may be found within. The good poem is not a meal cut into bits for a toothless child; it is an enticement for the complex palate. And reading a poem is no dry exercise in wheedling out the poet’s intent; it is savoring, experiencing. The poem doesn’t descend into meaning. The reader does.

Grey Brown’s poems in Communion, taken one by one, do not descend – they hover. Each one flashes into existence, the sudden arrival of a hummingbird. It pauses in flight and for a moment we can count every exquisite feather of its crimson gorget, but its wings are still whirring too fast to see. And then the next poem arrives. Line by line, page by page, the reader begins to perceive what is cupped in the poet’s hands. A sacrament that promises grace and life? A keen blade to mingle the blood of both reader and writer alike?

The book’s introduction defines communion as the sharing or exchange of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level. These poems are precisely such a serial exchange, linked in sequence of unfolding awareness, joined together not only by the progression of years and generations but also by the uncertainty, disappointment, and revelation that are inherent in one’s personal search for meaning. With the turn of each page, I find myself reflecting on my own fears and failures. Is there any hope for salvation? The poet grants a glimpse: none of us ever really survive, / but we get by.

❀

Grey Brown (Chapel Hill, NC) is the founder of the Literary Arts Program of the Health Arts Network at Duke and served as director for 25 years. Communion is her second full length poetry collection and is available from Redhawk Publications.

Additional poetry by Grey Brown at Verse and Image:

❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀

Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:

. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;

. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.

If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:

https://griffinpoetry.com/about/

If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.

If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to

COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM

Thanks again for joining the conversation.

– Bill