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[with 4 poems by Kim Hayes]
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Winter Wind and Chimes
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All this winter, the wind has moaned,
its deep modal harmonies
rolling up the valley’s throat
like a procession of monks, chanting.
And at the darkened door,
they strike the chimes –
cowled visitors
shifting restlessly, foot to foot,
on the icy steps.
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All this winter, like metronomes,
two ghostly porch chairs
have, in unison, rocked a rhythm
for strange sulfurous chords;
invented, frenzied arpeggios;
or just one strident not repeated,
brassy as a storefront bell –
wind and chimes tangled in
an endless ensemble.
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All this winter, she has listened,
even going out once to tie a string
around one pitchless chime,
hoping to set it better in tune.
But the wind worried loose the knot
and snatched it off.
Come spring, she thought,
I will take down these chimes.
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All this winter, the wind has composed
for chimes and chairs and a woman
who will, on second thought,
let the wind have its way,
leave the chimes alone
to be played by softer breezes
on a warm summer day.
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Kim Hayes
from As If She Spoke in Tongues, Grateful Steps Foundation, Asheville, NC; © 2023
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Technical challenge, that’s one of the reasons I love choral singing. Will I even be able to learn this tenor part with its oddball intervals and syncopation? Can I project a clear open tone all the way up to that G sharp, maybe the A? Can I keep balance & rhythm and avoid falling off the stage when the time signature flips from 6/8 to 2/2? Can I listen so perfectly to this alto standing next to me that our voices may create something beyond the sum of us two?
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This last challenge transcends technical. In an ensemble, the emphasis is not on the individual but the communal voice. Perhaps blend and modulation are learned skills, but the birth of art is in the give and take, the sharing, the group coming together as a single organism. What a fine metaphor for poetry. Writer and reader are not performer and audience. The poet can learn craft, devise image and simile, tinker with language and rhythm, but all the poem’s music is flat until the reader breathes it in and the lines begin to sing in her heart.
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This is the spark both music and poetry yearn to ignite: beyond technical and communal, the beauty and truth which burn into us and set us afire. Several times in this season of many rehearsals and concerts I have felt a moment’s elevation to that mysterious plateau. In a blink, the magic of notes, harmonies, lyrical language swell my heart until I can’t read the score for my tears. I couldn’t say the epiphany arises from the instruments, from the lines of verse, from the voices surrounding me – it takes life from all of these together. The music communicates its message directly to the heart.
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The choir releases its music into the air. The poet surrenders her lines to the universe. A new language is revealed. A new voice speaks from which some ear, some mind may discover some new life never before imagined. Our spirit breathes in these vaporous things and is exalted.
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The Grandmothers
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Thanksgiving morning,
before the sun, I wait
in the dark kitchen
for the gentle ghosts
of my grandmothers.
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I welcome them
as I heat the oven,
feel them gathering,
like the warm aromas
of brown sugar and
cinnamon, to watch me
as I baste and bake.
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In the drifting dust of sifted flour,
their hands guide mine:
a pinch more of this or
a little salt in the broth or
give that a stir before it sticks.
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A I set the table, they lean in,
sighing, fingers smoothing,
lingering over each fine stitch
in the embroidered
tablecloth, handed down,
daughter to daughter;
they smile as I take out
the old rose-patterned
wedding china.
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And so, they keep me company,
chat, chuckle and chide
all morning long as they
share my kitchen,
the grandmothers who,
by being who there were,
make me who I am.
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Kim Hayes
from As If She Spoke in Tongues, Grateful Steps Foundation, Asheville, NC; © 2023
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. . . as long as she kept [her words] to herself, they were one language. Her language. It was only when she gave them up, like babies for adoption, that they slipped from her grasp and became subject to interpretation. . . . No translation was the same. No understanding was universal. The language of her words unfolded into many languages, many understandings, as if she spoke in tongues.
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From the Author’s Note in As If She Spoke in Tongues by Kim Hayes, this is a mysterious and provoking expression of the potential and power of words. Innocent-sounding words spoken with heat might spark a conflagration. Words fumbling for meaning may yet reach their mark and forge strong bonds. Even we writers with the opportunity to pause and ponder, we who strive to select from all options the perfect words, can never know how they will be received. From this mystery rises poetry’s power to connect.
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The poems in Kim’s collection connect in all these mysterious ways. Her poems span generations and geographies. The speaker may be obvious and defined or intentionally obscure, thereby becoming universal. We humans are not, thank all stars, telepathic. Therefore from the writer’s images and memories we must create our own imagery and resurrect our own memories. And doesn’t this surprising connection we discover within ourselves also fire a feeling of connection to the writer?
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We cast our words into the breeze like feathered seeds and cannot know what will bloom. As in this line from Adrienne Rich, But poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don’t know you know. And these lines from Poems for Sale by Kim Hayes: a poem like a trick of the eye, / peripheral flicker – / what might or might not be, / glimpsed and gone; // I have for you today . . .
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[Order As If She Spoke in Tongues HERE ]
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Rocks and Hard Places
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Barefoot, I walk
on a dream road
paved with all your
rocks and hard places,
misery and discontent.
“I only had to bury him once,” you said.
“It’s the god-damned memories that won’t
stay in the ground.”
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Sharp-honed memories like flint shards,
chiseled by every hard place
you ever knew ( and there were plenty),
stabbing themselves upward to the surface,
resurrected and designed to cut deep.
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My feet are bleeding now.
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But tonight, I still plan to dance
with your unearthed undead,
twirling on yet another hard place,
by bloody footprints leaving
gritty, blushing rosettes,
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while you wait somewhere in the dark,
another rock in your hand.
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Kim Hayes
from As If She Spoke in Tongues, Grateful Steps Foundation, Asheville, NC; © 2023
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My Heart of Stone
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Running a thumb over
the worn and rounded edges
of this cold, found rock,
I try to think
of strength.
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This worry stone,
gemstone,
whetstone,
pocked and veined
with sparks
of fool’s gold, cools
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as I hold it,
no heart to part
with it today, although
I have often thought of
giving it away, until
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feeling the pull of it,
charged, magnetic,
I always come home,
press my heart of stone
into the warm palm of
your open hand.
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Kim Hayes
from As If She Spoke in Tongues, Grateful Steps Foundation, Asheville, NC; © 2023
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
You are planting wonderful seeds. ---B