Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 6,000,000 visitors since 2014 and over 9,000 archived posts.
Kari Gunter-Seymour: Last Night the Chime Of Tree Frogs
Granny Woman dances
under breeze-shivering branches,
her skirts a waltz of wings,
mouth full of stories.
She has emptied her house of men.
.
Out the side of her eye
the soft blur of rabbit,
and watchful dusk,
air ripe with herbs
and tinctures, the echo
of gasping roots.
.
She is the nighthawk,
sprung from chalky shell,
issuing her raspy bee-yoot
for all the names she gives the night,
surviving passages so narrow
they felt like birth canals,
every dawn she can remember
crushed between her teeth.
.
She will cradle you,
deliver you
from one mud to the next.
Anointer, holder
of upended petals
and misplaced halos,
I saw her in the dark morning,
glimmer and dust.
From A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen by Kari Gunter-Seymour (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2020).
Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio.
Three mountain women spinning yarn, 1939. The healers have traditionally served mountain communities. TENNESSEE STATE LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I have reason to believe my great grandma used herbs in Germany
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh, how much I LOVE your work, Kari. Well you know that. But this poem is particularly dear to me, because the granny women in deepest, darkest, rural German – my granny women – were the same. Loving you with rough hands, sneaking you a treat when nobody was looking (couldn’t appear weak now, could they), and with gruff voices and defiance: “We said it when the Nazis were in power we say it now with the Bosheviks. What more can they do to us?” Honest, brave, and ‘ emptied their houses of men.” How I loved them.
LikeLiked by 3 people
The granny women. Me? House emptied of men. The herbs. The moon. Echoes in the house. Plague outside the door.
LikeLiked by 2 people
HA! I’ve never thought of you as a granny woman, but maybe it fits.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Sister poets, yes?
LikeLiked by 3 people
Well-said, Rose Mary.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh, Rosemarie!
Thank you for this! May we always find strength in ourselves, each other and all that the land provides!
LikeLiked by 2 people