Hills hirsute above your dripping bluffs!
My chromosomes subside,
Abandoned for a time defensive mode
Sensing they are home.
Vibrations sympathetic with my DNA
Tell me yonder circling crow
Above that crew cut nameless ridge
And I down here below
In this hollow passing by
Share a hilly heritage
Neither can deny.
Kentucky hills!
The Ode to Joy rides upon a fiddle string,
And then I know it did not all begin with me,
When I was called to be aware,
Nor did I simply spring from out the air
My blood seeped over fossils of my type
Lying deep within these walls
Over which a Lilliputian cataract now falls,
And in my cells the flavor of this place is strong
So I am neither new nor do I sing my song
Within a program all alone
But squeezed through every layer
As the water of a hillside spring
I birthed from out the fissures
Of this sedimentary stone.
To stand upon striations in the bluff,
Where if I sing my piece with merit,
Ash that's mine will someday lie
One layer more in this Kentucky bluff of time.
This poem had not been read by anyone except Ben, himself, until I found it in a loose leaf notebook with around 50 other poems only a few weeks ago. Ben died on Good Friday. I can't tell you how much the poems mean to me, his widow, and all the family. I am sharing some of them with you, my blog friends.
With love, annie
old7lady9blogger80@gmail.com
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