V E R S E and I M A G E

[with 4 poems by Ruth Moose]

I’m driving from Elkin up to Dobson, our county seat, smack in the center of Surry. About half way there, as Mountain Park Road peels off to the left, Poplar Springs Road completes its transformation to Zephyr Road. I love that – Zephyr Road. There are farms and rolling hills and plenty of zephyrs, though some of them are perfumed with a whiff of chicken house or skunk. Soon winter wheat will green the fields, then Spring will raise corn, soybeans, finally tobacco. Off to the south you can see vineyards pruned and expectant.

While the pastures are still winter brown, pay attention. Look, there’s one – close to that big oak in the middle of an empty field, a little patch of green. Come March you’ll spy the yellow nod of daffodils. Why out there of all places?

Those daffodil plots, slowly spreading, most likely once knelt at the front stoop of a farm cabin. A century ago, even longer? No sign of it from the road but if I walked around the oak I might scuff up a few squared off stones that were its foundation or that hoisted a step up to the porch. The daffodils remember. And maybe it was the same man and the woman who hoed the corn, milked the cow, every winter killed the hog, two together across the years who some quiet evenings found an hour to sit on that porch, maybe they’re the ones who named the wagon track below the field Zephyr Road. I love that.

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Ruth Moose’s poems reflect the North Carolina icon she is. She draws on generations of memory to weave her stories and sketch her vivid images of locality and personality. Her sly wit, cloaked but never hidden by gentility, brings out the quirky individuality of the denizens of her world, real and imagined. And she reveals the deep, deep heart of longing, loss and yearning, our fragile mortality.

These poems are from three of her collections spanning decades. Ruth has also published novels, many short stories including two collections, and has won many awards and fellowships. Charles Edward Eaton said of her: Few writers can handle both prose and poetry, but Ruth Moose does them equally well, and with this double grasp has become one of North Carolina’s best writers. Ruth taught creative writing at the University of North Carolina until her retirement and she continues to support the creative life our home state.

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Smith Grove

There is a heaven
for farmhouses.
Acres of them
lit by cloud hills
that plunge and wind
past creeks
where cows crowd on hot days.
A million windows watch
where farm wives waited,
minded those who came,
those who left,
counted the colors
of morning, evenings,
the sky at noon.
From back door stoops
they marked storm clouds,
summers rent with heat lightning,
saying both aloud and under
their tongues the chant
of superstitions, old tales,
familiar talk until the dark
dissolved.

In the museum
of porch swings and farm tools,
kitchen work is rusted,
thick with the oven of meals,
baked enamel, porcelain polished
like plates.

from Smith Grove, Sow’s Ear Press, Abingdon, Virginia, 1997
Illustrations are by Ruth’s husband the late Talmadge Moose, widely published and displayed artist and illustrator; read more at Life As He Saw It in Our State Magazine, April, 2011, by Ruth Moose.

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Making the Bed

No matter how well
or worse the sleep
someone must take
the four cornered world
and set it straight.
Two can do it better,
take turns with edges,
coverlet, shams,
blanket and bolster,
wait in turn.

You can do it in the dark,
by feel, familiarity,
plumping feathers or foam.
You know your own scent,
shallow spots your knees
seek, the place you
fall into, dark and faraway,
taking you back or forward
like a train, all scenes
lighted cars you can look into,
out again. You hear the engine
that goes nowhere, the solitary
shriek as daybreak unrolls,
all wrappings out like flowers.

We go on with our lives.

from Making the Bed, Pure Heart Press / Main Street Rag Publishing, 1995

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Almost a Pantoum on Being

A script is not needed; our place is already there.
We come into the world naked, unafraid.
Helpless we learn as we go, if somebody cares.
From water we swim, kicking into blue air.

We come into the world naked, unafraid.
The spell is everywhere, something the soul knows.
From water we swim, kicking into blue air.
Alive as the earth is alive and newly green.

The spell is everywhere, something the soul knows.
No angels hover over us, sit on our shoulders.
We are alive as the earth is alive and newly green.
Taking the flight one wing at a time.

No angels hover over us, sit on our shoulders.
Celebration waits in the arms of others.
We learn the dance one step at a time.
Moving to tunes heard in our heads.
No script is needed. Our place is already there.

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How I Think It Will Be

My mother never talked about that winter
she had a husband in the VA hospital
not knowing how or if or when
he’d recover, three children sick
with the big red measles and twelve
inches of show on the ground
for over a week. She mentioned
it once, that’s all I remember
and the sound of her sewing
machine late, late into the night.
What did she sew? Her sanity?
Her soul? I only know I woke
suddenly, had gone from hot to cool,
my fever broken, my pillow wet.
I felt her hand on my forehead,
her touch, her voice as I left
that darkness and came into light.

I imagine it will be as she said then,
“Oh, here you are.”

both selections from The Librarian and Other Poems, Main Street Rag Publishing 2009
dedicated to HWLWG – HE WHO LEFT WITHOUT GOODBYE

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Chatham Arts Council bio of Ruth Moose
Poetry Foundation listing

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