At Cullowhee, The Throne of Psyche, Green Toad reading

A reading from The Throne of Psyche
(Mercer University Press)
7:00 p.m. Thursday May 26
The Green Toad Bookstore
198 Main St., Oneonta NY

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Not pink shell azalea but rhododendron...
pink, though!
Picture by my mother, Cullowhee, May 2011.

This poem is one that was requested by a number of people at my recent reading at City Lights in Sylva, North Carolina. I went to high school in Cullowhee, and my mother still lives there. I remember writing this poem outside her house, seated by a wild pink shell azalea, its mound of branches in full bloom, with a few blossoms already dangling by their stames like intrepid ballerinas. In two directions I could see the blue ranges of the mountains. It was one of those moments where the soul appears to stream out of the body and hang, weightless and joyful, in the air.

The boy, the egg--that was a dim memory of a Russian poem that I have now forgotten, all but the boy emerging from the trees with the egg in his hand. My children were present, not close to me but wandering with my mother on the mountain-top.

There is a popular bumper sticker  in North Carolina that reads, If God is not a Tar Heel, why is the sky Carolina blue? That sort of sentiment is one I often heard expressed by elderly people when I was a child--that the mountains are a place closer to God. That thread is here as well. And I did go to school with teens named Prince and Queen.  Rich mountain names...

The poem first appeared on Michael Burch's ambitious site, The Hypertexts.

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At Cullowhee


The Princess trees--the great seed-scattering weeds--
Erect their plum pagodas once again,
And I am rooted on the mountain's crest
As surely as are trillium, pink-shell, phlox
And uvularia--I lift the blades
To tuck the dyed eggs underneath and dream
Of a boy at the forest's edge who brought his gift,
A single egg with deep persimmon dye.
The peepers and the sweet metallic calls
Of birds are telling me--bell note, echo,
Quiver of air, trill, arrow of song--
About this place where names are Prince and Queen
And old folks say God wanders on the ridge.
How else could sky be such a heavenly blue?
Trailing children, watching the Easter hunt,
I now let go of all I ever wished.
I sniff the April ramps and ginger leaves,
I breathe the violets and sweet-smelling clay,
Seeing that my life has come to nothing.
How little I have made that's worth the keep!
My soul, much rinsed, is threadbare, fine as lawn.
And yet, like a child, I still draw near
The sky and rising mists, the hills that are
The mighty ramparts of a mercy seat.