Banner Mountain Girl # 69

From my journal: “It is raining very hard. The sky is dark and heavy with clouds full of water. It is a day in which I am usually lonely, but today my heart is filled with joy that is lasting over into this dark and rainy day.”

I am a writer and I must write. Often, I wonder what is new to write? Even if, like Hemingway, I should begin with one true sentence, how would I complete a work that I haven’t even thought about? It’s amazing how sometimes my words and phrases tumble over each other to crowd the page, and other times, the page remains blank because a long, dry spell has control of my sub-conscious. Writer’s block is for real from time to time in a writer’s life. And it’s to be expected. As far as I can tell, there’s no quick cure for it.

Journal entry: “I have no creative thoughts but I feel compelled to write something. Drove out to Banner Mountain. Enjoyed the peacefulness of the woods. I always like to go back there.”

Going back to Banner Mountain is like going back home–the place I left at the age of barely nineteen. On an autumn day following our wedding and honeymoon, my husband and I loaded our wedding gifts into the car he had borrowed from an Air Force buddy and we began our journey in life together. A couple of days later, we arrived at Smoky Hill Air Force Base out on the Kansas plains–the countryside so different from my beloved Banner Mountain, with its woodlands, its songbirds, and its kind and gentle people. I would meet other wonderful people as we followed my husband’s military career. I would live in other states in the United States and in one foreign country before my husband retired. After his retirement we moved back to Arkansas, back to the Ozarks to live not very far from Banner Mountain.  © Freeda Baker Nichols

 

Banner Mountain Girl # 67 from my journal . . .

from my journal . . .

Dark clouds were forming in the west but Kimberly still sat quietly in the sand. As the waves rushed toward the shore, touched it, spraying a fine mist over her, she dug her toes into the warm grains of sand, recalling Whitman’s words the night they met.

“Look, Kimberly. Over there, above the shimmering sea.”

She followed the direction that he pointed and she saw the harvest moon, silver and bright, and she thrilled to the rich tone of Whitman’s voice as he said, “I’ll give you that moon.”

She wanted to laugh with him, but she couldn’t. Something prevented her from feeling the joy that was so much a part of Whitman. He was a penniless poet and yet he seemed to be happier than she and Tony.

She was engaged to Tony. He offered her love, security, and wealth.

“I’m sorry, Whitman,” she had replied that night. “I can’t accept the moon. I’m engaged to Tony.”

“Ah, yes,” Whitman said.

She had laughed and he had laughed and the joy she felt was much greater than any feeling she had shared with Tony.

She ended her engagement with Tony and after time went by, he met and married Sarah.

Kimberly saw Whitman almost every day and she expected him to propose to her but there was no mention of marriage although he claimed to love her dearly.

So dearly that he gave her the stars along with the moon and that made her happy in a way that Tony never had.

Time passed and Tony and Sarah had a child, a little girl and people said that Tony adored the baby and that they were a happy family.

Whitman wrote poetry and he continued to be penniless but his poetry spoke of love and laughter, the moon, the stars and the sea.

Kimberly waited and she cried when Whitman wasn’t with her.

One day he said, “It’s over.” And he kissed her gently and said goodbye. He left and her heart felt like crushed velvet in an old-time dime store.

“Don’t go! It’s soon!” Kimberly cried.

The dark clouds hovered closer. And her heart declared, “The pain that’s in goodbye cries, ‘Look up, Whitman, see the dark and brooding sky? Where, Whitman, where is the silver moon?'”

© Freeda Baker Nichols

 

Banner Mountain Girl # 63– Along the River – page 107

Along the River

I brushed my hair the way I
always do and dressed in clothes
I wear to church and . . . funerals.
I attended a reception for the debut
of an anthology of contemporary
Arkansas poetry. I shook hands with
people—each person present was
strikingly different from the others.
Each one had arrived into this life
in much the same way–from his or her
mother’s womb. Some had been born
again, into a spiritual life, while others,
perhaps, hadn’t accepted God’s Grace.
My elbow didn’t touch another’s elbow
and yet . . . that’s why I was there.
I signed my autograph for the first
time and for a few more times.
A heart-felt poem, created long ago,
was brought to life on page 107
to live or die within the realm
of perception. And I became a poet
“Along the River.”

© Freeda Baker Nichols

 

 

 

 

 

 

Banner Mountain Girl # 48 — “A poem begins . . .”

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness . . . It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.”–Robert Frost

At the age of nine, I had not heard of Robert Frost when I wrote my first poem, there at Banner Mountain in the two room schoolhouse. But my first poem was about love for my mother. My words rhymed, and I’m sure I was following the teacher’s instructions when I penned my first masterpiece onto the page of that Big Chief tablet.

But it would be many years before I set foot on my journey into writing and poetry. And now, I continue with writing and poetry because they are my destiny. The journey is still adventurous and lovely, sometimes frustrating but always satisfying. I agree with the quote by Robert Frost on how a poem begins. He created masterpieces!

~ Freeda Baker Nichols

 

BANNER MOUNTAIN GIRL # 30 “MAMA”

Red Roses in the Rain

Laura Sephrona Baker

Laura Sephrona Baker

Goose and Gander

Ole Jerse

MAMA

Her name was Laura Sephrona. She was my mama. I am the sixth of her seven children. Four girls and three boys. Her grandchildren called her Granny.
She braided her black silken hair and wound it around and around her head. Her eyes were blue-bonnet gray. She was short and plumpish when I knew her. In a photo, on a yellowed postcard with crinkled corners, she was dressed in a white blouse, trimmed with tatted lace and a long, black cotton skirt with a small waistband. She wore high top lace-up leather shoes.
She fell in love with daddy the first time she looked into his blue eyes.
In spring, she tended to corn, okra, and other vegetables in the meadow garden. She stored fresh red, round tomatoes in a lard bucket and hung it on a prong of the cedar post that cornered the back porch. The tomatoes were juicy and good, she said, sprinkled with salt.
Her tanned, wrinkled fingers once picked soft gray-white feathers from ducks squawking in rhythm to each yank of snowy down. The feathers made their way into the pillows that we slept on at night.
Mama milked “Ole Jerse” and placed the fluffy foam on pink tongues of orphaned kittens.

Sometimes she doctored me and my siblings with castor oil and she said, “Swallow this. It tastes good with sugar on it.”
I said nothing to disagree with her opinion because the weathered oak bench we were sitting on was beneath Mama’s blooming peach tree.
Mama quilted the quilts for our beds with fingers tender from being stuck by the sharp needles.
She built a fire in the wood stove to cook our meals. She wore an apron made from flour sacks. She wrung the necks of chickens to prepare our Sunday dinners. Sometimes the preacher came for dinner and she always served fried chicken.
She taught her daughters how to become keepers of our homes. By following her example and with the grace of God, the four of us maintained stable homes.
She showed us the milky way and taught us nursery rhymes about starlight.

“Wish I may, wish I might
have the wish I wish tonight.”

She wrote in my diary that “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” Beside that, she added the Golden Rule. “Always do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
She taught us the Bible in many ways. By example and by a game she played with us by  asking what our dreams were and then opening up the worn leather cover of our family Bible to find these words “and it came to pass.”

And my dreams did “Come to pass.”

I became a writer, a wife, mother, grandmother and now a great grandmother.

My mama was the very best!  I loved her with all my heart and I cherish her memory!

BANNER MOUNTAIN GIRL#28 “Red Daylilies”

RED DAYLILIES

The house is empty now
and no one tends
the flowers, growing still
along the walk where once
I strolled with Mama.

My hand in hers, she walked
with me and talked about
the blue hydrangeas,
Phlox of pink,
daylilies red, and
golden black-eyed Susans,
dazzling at their peak
of color
in the sun.

I walk along the
silent footpath now,
where only shadows move.
I miss Mama.

© Freeda Baker Nichols

Yvonne & Freeda Baker

Red Roses in the Rain

GOING HOME

GOING HOME

My plane is airborne, headed south.

Memories march in and out of my mind–

like dogface soldiers.

I’d said goodbye to Mama, then Daddy,

who bent to hug my three year old son

not very long ago.

Emotion struck Daddy like blows.

He straightened, then turned too late

to hide moist eyes.  His blue eyes had

laughed when I was my son’s age.

Youth disappears like the dandelion fuzz

on the face of the wind.

Adams Field is windy . . . but the

planes’ wheels touch the runway

in a smooth landing.

“No, son, Papa’s not here . . .

to meet us.”

Uncle Jim’s brown pickup needs washing.

“Your mama’s taking it bad, ” he tells me.

“Is the wake at the house?” I ask.

He nods. “Like your daddy wanted.”

At the doorway, someone takes my

little boy by the hand.

“The casket’s gray. I never saw Daddy

in a coat and tie before. He’s so cold-looking.

Mama? Mama!”

Her warm arms engulf me.

© 2017 Freeda Baker Nichols

A Summer Night

Whip–poor–will!  Whip–poor–will! A voice declares. It reaches across time and my remembering stops with the sound as it peacefully echoes back from a silent night of long ago. The summers of my childhood come alive with color as a cup of fiery memories overflows.

Yvonne & Freeda Baker

After supper, our family sat on the front porch of our home on Banner Mountain in the Ozark Foothills until time to go to bed.

Dusk appeared just as the whippoorwills began to sing.  Fireflies flitted about the yard and some of them had the misfortune of getting stuck inside a jar, held by small, sweaty hands.  Jarflies were so noisy that adult voices had to stop sometimes, but the children’s laughter continued and mingled with the noise of the approaching nighttime.

Daddy never said how tired he was or how hard he had worked or how aggravated he had been.  It seemed as though he loved everybody he had ever met, and felt no ill will toward anyone.

And Mama was always unruffled, unhurried, and able to relax as she went about her household duties. The apron she wore has no replicas.

The modern day housewife seldom wears an apron. But her children need to feel the security that I felt on those summer evenings when my family gathered to wait for bedtime –when the dogs lay lazily in a corner of the yard, and chickens were on the roost, the door to the henhouse closed and locked.  Once again the chickens had escaped the whistling hawk that sailed the clear skies overhead. Tomorrow would be another day.  Whip–poor–will!

© Copyright, Freeda Baker Nichols, all rights reserved.

 

 

The Sea is a Mermaid

                             THE SEA IS A MERMAID

The sea is a mermaid who keeps tapping, tapping at the door
like the raven in Edgar’s poem who quoted “Nevermore.”*
Water lapping, gently lapping on the banks of Gloucester’s shore.

Many times before, with his crew, Nate had gone down to the sea.
He had always returned to his home and sweetheart, Lora Leigh.
Lora Leigh’s  flaxen hair was ruffled by the late autumn breeze.
Her eyes glistened like dewdrops fallen on pale lilac leaves.

Red clouds gathered slowly that morn across the northwestern sky.
Lora felt the premonition though she prayed it was a lie.
She begged Nate, “Please heed the warning. Promise me you will not go
down to the sea this morning.” And he replied, “Don’t worry so.”

Nate and his crew secured positions aboard Athena Gale.
They waved to their loved ones and then set the swordfish boat to sail.
Lora cried. Her heart beat faster than it ever had before.

Like the raven in Edgar’s poem who quoted “Nevermore,”*
the sea is a mermaid who keeps tapping, tapping at the door.
The Athena Gale and crew returned to Gloucester nevermore.

The force of hurricane winds quickly sank the ship far off shore.
One life raft found unoccupied called to mind each crewman’s name.
Its emptiness told the story with a message all too plain.

The foghorn signaled strongly against the raging tempest’s roar
but fell mute to worn-out fishermen a hundred miles from shore.
The hurricane’s powerful winds thrust high the dangerous waves
that heaved the sailors down to the dark and silent, salt-lined graves.

“What did they  tell the children when each one questioned, ‘Why
did the Athena Gale sink and all the fishermen have to die?'”

Did they tell them Nate and all his crew were predestined to drown?
That it was a Perfect Storm that swept the ship Athena down?
That the sea is a mermaid who keeps tap, tapping at the door?
That she claims the lives of the weakest and the strongest crewmen?

Some go down to the sea in ships and come safely back to shore.
Others go down to the sea in ships and return . . . nevermore.
Water lapping, gently lapping on the banks of Gloucester’s shore.

* Reference to “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe

 

© Copyright, Freeda Baker Nichols   (A work in progress. This poem is based on the true account of the Andrea Gail, the fishing vessel and all its crew who were lost at sea in 1991 during a so-called “Perfect Storm.” Names in my poem are fictitious. Other names and fiction have been added. My inspiration to write this poem began with a visit to Gloucester, Massachusetts in 2006. I stayed at the Emerson Inn by the Sea in Rockport, Massachusetts. And I visited Gloucester where I took the pictures of the monuments honoring fishermen and their families. As I sat by the sea, I listened to the lapping water and wrote the first line of this poem. These ten years later, it’s ready to post, but I doubt that it’s finished. I’m posting it now with respect to the memory of the Andrea Gail and her crew.)

 

 

 

The Baker Sonnet

I have created a new sonnet form, the Baker Sonnet,  and I’m introducing it in the Poetry Day Contests 2016 with Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas. The Baker Nichols Award contest for this year is open to PRA members only. Some awards are open to Arkansas residents and some are open to all poets.  Information on the contests may be seen here. Entries are not to be sent before June 1, 2016 and must be postmarked by August 15, 2016.

The Baker Sonnet form is fourteen lines of iambic pentameter and concludes with a couplet which may or may not be indented. The rhyme scheme is a-B-b-c-a-a-b-c-d-c-d-B-e-e. Note the repetition of lines two and twelve.

No Longer Mine

The rain falls damp onto the grass tonight.
My heart is sad because your love is gone.
The barren ground is cold where sun once shone.
The moon and stars no longer gleam above.
Somehow they hide their shine of silver light.
The darkest sky becomes my dreadful plight
as I begin to spend my time alone.
How can I go through life without your love?
Another holds you spellbound by her charms
as I give up the goals that I dreamed of.
I wait with aching heart and empty arms.
My heart is sad because your love is gone.
Once, I believed your promises were true.
My heart now breaks each time I think of you.

© Freeda Baker Nichols

Note: My poem example here is a work-in-progress. How does a poet know when a poem is ready for the printed page?