Mountain Vistas

From our recent trip to the Tennessee mountains.  The countryside is so beautiful.  The Ferris wheel -- 20 stories high! -- is at a place called The Island, near our lodge on the Pigeon River.

Cynthia Hall Lanier

Cynthia Hall Lanier

Tucked in the pines where the ivy grows

and sun spots dance in the shadows

She and Mary played hide and seek,

giggling sisters with secrets to keep.

Time spooled on and Mary flew

great things to learn and do.

Cynthia followed her mother's tracks

to the department store, then followed them back

to that sweet place that time forgot,

where pansies bloom in a weathered pot.
In another house just around the way

lived the man she'd marry one day,

who at the farmer's market likely she passed,

between them not a glance cast.

Now all these years since

with neighbors they talk at the fence

of what's good at the farmer's market today,

then on to sweep the stoop where her cats play

and smells of home cooking fill the rooms

and on her face that sly smile blooms,

rabbits and cats and freinds to her delight,

a blue glass cat at the window catching the light.

Janice Baynes

 May 2012 

Majesty of the Mountains

Something about the mountains pulls me as a magnet I cannot resist.  Something ancient in my bones, something I cannot name. Both my parents were of the mountains but my young feet traversed only the folds at the foot of the mountains where the skirt ripples out over the land.  As with the trees, I want to melt into those hills, sleep cradled in their bosom. Why do they call me so? What do they want with me?

A Poem for Karen...

Karen Hubbard Mitchell

Shoulders back, chin up

brown eyes hone in on the work,
nimble hands flying into action,
industrious soldiers of a sharp, rapid-fire mind.
Digging into life, slicing the challenges

as the swift Detroit River,
carving it's path with great intention.
By that northern town where the water is wide
she cut her teeth on usefulness,
the current that propels her

with steel determination.
The first born of Ben and Ellen,

who by sheer grit alone put education first,

she studies life with ravenous appetite.

She met Bob at university,

down south they went,
the doctor and his bride,

ears not tuned to the cornbread expression,

"Y'all come see us, ye hear."

A big city girl in a small southern town.

(God save the queen!)

She found her way,

transmitting that prodigious ethic

to the next generation,

championing women's advance,

a Girl Scout all the way,
infinity gleaming in her eyes,
grown wide

by the grand arc of those snowy great lakes.

~
Janice Baynes, January 15, 2011

(A commissioned poem offered at auction at the 2010 UUCS Auction. Like it? Come bid on this item and I'll draw you with words too. The auction, our 17th, is set for Saturay November 12, 5:30 - 9ish.)

Remembering Summer...

The Conductor

Kaci Cotter, D.R. Middle School Director of Bands

The Conductor

Cacophony in the band room

Random notes flung at the walls

Issued from eager green musicians

Who twine the middle school halls.

Just babies really

Budding in that awkward way

With fits and starts and

Tinny squeals as they learn to play.

But in all that noise

Lie the golden strands

That when timed just right

Open the portal to magic lands.

Ahhh, and up, up she goes,

A massive bird taking flight

Carried by the fledglings

She soars high, gyrating crisp and bright.

And all around in every ear

Blooms this sweet nectar of the gods

Drawn forth by one so skilled,

The wielder of the divining rod.

May 2011

"Daffodils" (1804)

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).