an older post where the font went ghostly

Sometimes there’s a hum that hovers across and over this patch of land, like cicadas in August or the wheeze of a strange, busted harmonica a little boy might find chucked in with his toys, a mystery song waiting to happen, caught in holes between tin. But tonight the stillness separates and parses the air, like mist rising over a pond early in the morning. Just beyond the cow pasture the old log cabin has on its new face, its two chimneys stouter now and its windows immaculate and maybe even a little impenetrable. I miss its crumbling edges, the triangle of air at the bottom of the front left-hand window. And I am not sure I want the old stone wall around the little cemetery to be restored. I like the mossy moats that separate its stones. There is even talk of cutting down the cedar tree by the cemetery entrance. Its lopsided coniferous grace is a benediction to me, though, a familiar sentinel over the years, when I’ve come to pay my respects to Laura Sorrells Smith, born 1878, died 1905. Last time I was here I stacked a small cairn of stones from the pinewoods by her marker. History is palpable here, a prayer for continuity and awareness, a blessing into kin. The broken places show it best. Their shabby beauty needs the gentle tending that honors their splits and rifts, that lets their fractured beauty be seen by those who need their stories and their lonesome strength. I’ll miss them if they’re fixed. For now I don’t mind moving tousles of pinestraw away from the shapes of angels and the curves of my family name.

still

Kudzu does its thing
Green encroachment claiming earth
No one is still home

the secret changes

My pilgrim heart
waits for you
in the middle of
its own unrecognized
silent compass.
Your wordless psalm
lets me pray along
with it, all of us
alive together
here in the secret
changes of faith's
transfiguring night.

©Laura Sorrells 2015
all rights reserved

Where I'm From (2007 version)

I am from the mountains and forests of north central Georgia, from the slanting foundation of Sorrells Springs Primitive Baptist Church, from Wild Turkey Trail and picnics in the Baldwin Street Cemetery, from the old Floyd homeplace on Dog Lane, from drinking Dancing Goats coffee with lots of sugar on College Square, from breaking curfew at North Georgia and from the greening energy of California’s Central Valley in springtime. I am from late night walks on the shores of Lake Herrick, from climbing the fire tower at Lake Conasauga, from the wall at Fort Mountain and the boom of Kennesaw cannons. I am from wild turkeys at my mother’s grave, from rose-hued sunrises over Sharptop’s spire, from go-cart paths in the pastures and from buying sweetgrass lotion at Chipa’s powwows. I am from the streets of New York City, from Big Sur and Wupatki, and from Namaste on the path at Mingo Falls. I am from wading in the Studdards’ creek, from long intellectual harangues at the Globe, and from In the Night Café. I am from the Dollar Tree and from the musty stacks at Jackson Street Books, from discount CDs at Ruthless Records and from vintage brooches found in thrift store sale bins. I am from Spanish moss on the ghost beach at Jekyll and from the tabby ruins of old Darien, from Brunswick stew and dolphins, and from Christmas fireworks over the square in Ellijay.
I am from the scent of woodsmoke at Trackrock, my grandmother’s teacakes baking, my mother’s Wind Song perfume, from Nag Champa incense and patchouli oil, from the summery funk of lakewater and mud at the Braswells’ bass pond, from the poignant waft of sweetshrub and honeysuckle through my open window in springtime, from the grittiness of Athens city streets at three a.m., and from leather and hay in the tackroom at the barn.
I am from Johnny Cash, from Radiohead, from REM playing incognito at the 40 Watt Club, from Gospel Jubilees on Sunday mornings on my grandma’s television set, from the Andy Griffith theme song, and from the haunted calls of whippoorwhills in the dusk over the soybean fields. I am from Two More Bottles of Wine, from Neal Pattman’s one-armed blues genius on Wednesday nights, from Smells Like Teen Spirit, and from my stairway settling in the wind on a cold January night. I am from silence and bluegrass, from grunge and discourse, from Southern drawls and crickets chorusing in the hardwoods. I am from Leonard Cohen and Patty Griffin, from Kind of Blue and Nighthawks at the Diner, and from the snapping self-conversation of the Epiphany bonfire over by the lake.
I am from red-eye gravy and pancakes, from strong lattes laced with nutmeg, from Grandma’s creamed potatoes swimming in butter, from tomato aspic and mayonnaise at Thanksgiving, from pepper jelly and cream cheese, from sushi at Seal Beach, from Tut’s Chicken, and from peanuts submerged in RC Cola on a hot July afternoon. I am from my mother’s fried okra, from tentative sips of my dad’s Miller Lite, from lime fizzy water, from persimmons crawling with wasps at the edge of the woods, from the infinity of blackberries, from scorched campfire hot dogs, and from my grandma’s time-honored barbecue sauce saturating chicken breasts on Styrofoam plates.
I am from Doc, Ruth, Duff, and Marjorie, from Marvin and Kathryn and Joan, and from generations of Southern housewives and farmers. I am from revenuers and sheriffs, from artistry and shock treatments, from scandal and honor, and from quiltframes and pastels. I am from bitter divorce, from grace and forgiveness, and from climbing trees and building huts in the woods with Leigh and Lynn. I am from Betsy’s crush on Erik Estrada, from Azalee’s loyal insanity, from Big Gary and Wanda, from Louis and Carolyn, from Uncle Kenneth’s incessant rocking, and from my great-aunt Fannie Mae’s recipe chests and herbal teas. I am from Mr. Gorman’s third grade writing prompts, from Hitchcock on Friday afternoons, and from making peace with small town presence and absence.
I am from Chinook’s rocking canter across the Colquitts’ pasture, from Shellie’s pawshakes and Whitefoot’s atonal howls, from Connor the fighting tom with the milky left eye, and from litter after litter of April kittens birthed under the screen porch. I am from Tess’ grave at the foot of the mountainsteps, from Scoutcat Sorrells flying into the cedar tree, from rescuing the cedar waxwing, and from Bailey the chameleon. I am from the exploding aquarium at the Van Horne house, from taming Annabel, from hawk sightings over the athletic field, and from the bear on the deck during the drought. I am from five raccoons dangling from the bird feeder, from the ghost possum leaning against the glass door, and from the jackrabbit in the desert.
I am from Ulysses, from Boo Radley saving the Finch kids on Hallowe’en night, from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, from Julian and Lao-Tzu, and from the journals of Thomas Merton. I am from haiku and metaphor, from Yeats and Eliot, from Conrad and Hurston, from Where the Wild Things Are, Encyclopedia Brown, and A Wrinkle in Time, and from rediscovering my seventh grade diary in my dad’s attic when I was thirty-five. I am from Christabel and Blake’s Tyger, from Charlie Brown Christmas trees and Krishnamurti, from “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” and from One Hundred Years of Solitude. I am from Rumi and Issa, from Bob Dylan and Alice Walker, from Mary’s wild geese and Robert’s Mending Wall, and from Lyra and her daemon. I am from teaching Antigone to kids who can barely read, from The Highwayman and Annabel Lee, from Frankenstein and Tupac, and from reading Nikki Giovanni and Langston Hughes aloud to my students during Black History Month. I am from Wayfarers in Walton and The Bone People, from Sherman Alexie and John Steinbeck, and from student essays and poems crowding my dining room table.
I am from Kurosawa and Kubrick, from Little House on the Prairie and Tuesday nights with mom and The Gilmore Girls, from Georgia Backroads and Prairie Home Companion, from Sesame Street and The Electric Company, and from endless reruns of Northern Exposure. I am from Wild Strawberries and Lone Star, from The Last Waltz and Night of the Hunter, from Land of the Lost and Charlie’s Angels, from Hee Haw on Saturday nights and Law and Order episodes back to back on a rainy day. I am from the peace sticker on my battered old Ford sedan, from riding bikes to the corner, from the passenger seat of the blue go-cart, and from cutting my hand open on the hood ornament of my dad’s antique Buick.
I am from the warmth of flannel shirts in winter, from pinestraw beneath my bare feet, from magnolia pods crunching underfoot, from hearthheat and firewarmth at the Cove, from the gold plaid seats of my Chevy Nova, from comfort and struggle, from running through the sprinkler and inhaling chlorine water at the country club pool, from the Atlantic Ocean in December and from Pacific tidal pools crowded with black oystercatchers. I am from travel and stasis, from longing and contentment, from passion and solitude, and from loneliness and intense joy. I am from grief and connection, from remembrance and yearning, and from the celebratory richness of the journey.

----lks 2007

This Nest

This nest is a shadow slipping away from itself into the body of the world.

This nest is the back of a pirate’s head, stern and foolish in its seadrenched tousle of cloth.

This nest is the wing of a raptor, tipped with sky and the shouts of smaller creatures on the forest floor below.

This nest is the punctuation of weather.

This nest is a whirlwind, mute but full of consequence.

This nest is an acclamation, a bow to the magic of work in the night.

This nest is a cave, silent until you go deep enough to hear the sound of waterfalls.

This nest is a knot in the archetypal tree of life, puzzled by its own antiquity and size.

This nest is the way a well looks suspended in air and soft with the deficit of shallow mud.

This nest is a big velvet curtain with a heavy tasseled cord to make it move.

This nest is a wooden barrel waiting for the warm rain of April.

This nest is the head of a bear, asleep in a place no one knows to look for.

This nest has the bold but fragile determination of wax across the lip of an envelope, waiting to be disturbed and even broken.

This nest is a witness to the work of dry days in midwinter.

This nest is the shift of a clenched fist into an outstretched palm, offered sideways as a salutation and a nod.

This nest wants to be a bonfire but settles for claiming the bodies of fierce and dangerous creatures who carry the sting of flame.

This nest is a saint, a relic of patience.

This nest is the cousin of the mountaintop it frames against the silver winter sky.

This nest is some kind of promise, a paradox of stillness hoarding strength.

This nest is a cloud heavy with repentance and ready to shed its burdens into the waiting boughs of leafless trees in Lent.

This nest has a language made of scents and shapes, of the flavors of treebark and basil, of the song that the eaves sing in high winds.

This nest knows things about the land that no one else does. It might be waiting for the question that will make it hum like a harp or a banjo.

This nest is the cape of a journeying hero, ragged from the clutch of foreign caverns.

This nest is a sheet of lightning, waiting for the chance to be a fork.

This nest is a boulder stuck in the cleft of a rushing river, eager to make friends with stranded paddlers.

This nest is the head of a giant, used to the way things look in thinning air.

This nest claims its own sovereignty but still does what the stormwinds say it should.

This nest knows the syllables of three seasons and hopes to learn the language of the fourth.

This nest is not a compromise or a loss. It lives with being torn apart and shredded. A little bit of its sleeping heart will hang around like a hologram in the space above the forest when it falls, even if the textures of its walls have long since crumbled. Its brokenness is part of the horizon’s memory palace forever, one of those subtle claims that nature has on time, a bookmark inserted in between the pages of an empty wordless book shaped like a circle.

©Laura Sorrells 2015

all rights reserved

the rhetoric of silence

The burning cure
of sacramental encounter
is calling me out
of my stillness.
The rhetoric of silence
is teaching me how
to ask, how to
worship. How to
confess the petty
troubles of my
willingness. How,
finally, to remain,
despite the pull
of the world's
safe and stifling
strangeness.

©Laura Sorrells 2014
all rights reserved

stirring into

All the busy servants
of your work
are trembling and silent
here in the bloom
of your strange blessing.
Everywhere, the stories
you sent us
are stirring into
a kind of gentle
consummation. Do you
recognize my giddy
heart? Can you
discern how its bones
have made a
spectacle of
waiting? All along
the way you've
talked and burned.
My silence is
the history of adoration,
the secret genius
of losing, a swoon
of thyme and thunderstorm,
the way the mountain smells
as you climb it.
----©Laura Sorrells 2014
all rights reserved

Why not?

The humble name of
the Beloved
burns everything into
breath.
Why not choose
to seek the
crucible, and behold
its luminous
praise?

©Laura Sorrells 2013
all rights reserved

a new thought

A new thought
is remembering its
soul. For so long
a lonely vigilance
has guarded the
soil of faith.
Listen and see;
become the willing
servant of love.
Anything can heal
your fear
if you bless it.
----©Laura Sorrells 2013
all rights reserved

already

A jumbled, shining
music comes
to find me
in the corners
of your quiet
weather. Already
I can feel its
footsteps crossing
my heart, like
oars in the rain
of a river,
rising.

©Laura Sorrells 2013
all rights reserved

light's attention

Mountain laurel
glows in light's attention.
Every minute
seems to wait
on the wind
to trade in winter
for the humming
urgency of
bees.
----©Laura Sorrells 2013
all rights reserved

This was a found poem, culled from Dave Bonta's blog The Morning Porch and the responses to it.

another rediscovered

from 2007

This ravine, still green and furious with foliage, is a kind of gap, its thirty-three descending wooden steps obscured by ferns and moss in October’s unseasonable heat. At the bottom, in the trough near the grotto where I stood with the spiderweb last month and played with light, I once buried my cat Tess, a gray and orange tortoiseshell who loved my mother. I wrapped her in a thinning ancient towel, white with marigolds across it, a brightness I saw the next morning from my deck, knowing I’d made the grave in that hard dark earth too shallow. That unearthing, however it happened, seemed to me then a kind of seamless holy thing, like Annie Dillard’s bloody tom, distributing gore across her waking body at dawn, his compact hunter’s form a tawny stamp of fecundity, much like the flare of vivid yellow I saw in the forest that morning: a flag, brash and empty.

Mary Street

Walking home alone

in the electric sheen

of post-thunderstorm
April evening,

the night is lambent

with reawakened moonlight;

the street is tossed

with foolish bits
of flying energy

released from
pre-storm torpor

by the punk
of lightning’s sulphur,

by the voice of thunder
in these mountains.

Branches arc
across the streetside,

narrow dark curves
of dispossessed tree

flung down from
home by wind.

Leaves, like paper-thin mice

with brains made
frantic by rain,

hurry past,

their voices the sylvan inheritance

of each season’s violence,

done to trees:

the pressure of ice
in winter,

its weight on branches
in leafless stillness,

the intemperate blasts of spring,

as cold air gives
way to warm,

as frost is displaced
by the small

bright fires of
growth in wood.

I recall the August blasting

of a favorite white oak by lightning:

A ravaged ash
alone in a dry field,

a scorched sentinel
made electricity’s victim.

Then autumn’s disavowal
of green, its dismantling
of that cloak
of shuddering chlorophyll,

its dispersal of color
into earth,

the souls of sweetgums
made ready

for the ascetic
winter lives of owls

and sleeping creatures,

each naked branch
a voiceless prayer

of restoration
and of pagan grace.

©Laura Sorrells 1996

all rights reserved

that conversation

Something in this silence
needs to be loved.
Its breath wants
the careful religion
of attention. Each
smoky sigh deepens
the wordless blessing
of this ache. My eyes wait
in the dark for the tender
call of Nothing.
Anywhere can be the
meeting-place of
hymn and emptiness,
the marriage bed
of praise and distance.
Listen for that
conversation, and
be ready
to leave your life.

©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved

This Leaf

This leaf is an atlas of small worlds that travel silently.

This leaf is a tabula rasa, a scrim of thinning blankness waiting for change.

This leaf is the empty swimming pool after Labor Day, a shape turned deeper by emptiness.

This leaf is the tilt of the bird-feeder’s wooden roof clambered on by squirrels, spinning from a cord of fraying rope.

This leaf is a patchwork quilt, or the lining of one, found at a thrift store and waiting for its cotton body.

This leaf is an acoustic guitar secretly yearning for the buzz of electricity.

This leaf is the pond that is filling back up with water after months of crackling drought.

This leaf is a plastic tugboat the color of a jack o’lantern, waiting to be mysteriously sunken in a small moat.

This leaf is a cloud fallen to earth, limning what it touches with the disappearance of winter.

This leaf is a mirror, cupping the shifts of seasons above it and showing them off to the sky.

This leaf is a skillet, sizzling with flour and waiting for the little green dice of homegrown okra to give it purpose and flavors.

This leaf is the lens you lost from your glasses last year when you were climbing up a rocky bank to take a picture of a tree.

This leaf is a band-aid, the last one left in your upper left hand desk drawer, handed to a child whose elbow wants to wear the face of Batman.

This leaf is a sandalwood mala, sagging over the splinters of a wooden bench beside a pond you used to visit, its crimson tassel fading into rose in rain.

This leaf is the chamois shirt your old lover gave you, left beside the trail tree in the forest, its buttery warmth befriending other leaves now.

This leaf is the chalice that you found in the basement, one of a pair, tarnished but waiting to hold something wet.

This leaf is the puddle you stepped in in sockfeet, the touch of cold that woke you up.

This leaf is a shard of pottery tucked against the base of a big old oak tree in what used to be a garden.

This leaf is an anchor, but not one that works real well.

This leaf is the kayak you fell out of on the Coosawattee River near some rocks and roaring water.

This leaf is a crimson prayer flag ripped down by wind from the branch of a poplar in your yard.

This leaf is a page from a book in another language.

This leaf is the raft of logs and twine you dream of floating away on when you’re restless.

This leaf is a riverstone, cool to touch and carried in the pocket of your peacoat in December.

This leaf is a circle of abalone smoking with sage.

This leaf is a lost wooden chesspawn  lonesome for bishops and knights.

This leaf is the story of threshold you love like the poem you memorized in April, the one that sang like an angel might, the one you wrote down in four different places so you could read it whenever you wanted. It knows how to keep you up late at night and tell you things you need to hear.

This leaf is the note in the bottle, the koan you floated away on a rising Sapelo Island tide.

This leaf resists being part of constructed art and does not enjoy the way tape feels between it and thick journal paper.

This leaf is the magnifying glass you carry around to see even smaller.

This leaf is the top of a fencepost, once a circle but splayed into broadness by seasons.

This leaf is a crumbling cabin of tannin, its roofbeams collapsing in on the space inside it.

This leaf is the adventure of touch, the challenge of handclasp and holding.

This leaf is a page from the book I write every day, the one where every word carries more than most people would be able to see, the one with the color of slow smoke and pondwater at its heart, the one synonymous with the best prayer I’ve offered, the one that holds my fingers captive and shows them what to do when they don’t know. No one will ever read it, but its chapters love the world I give it relentlessly and without fear, certain of the rightness of moments and the syllables of speech, determined to keep on talking even when its writer’s voice is soft with another poem’s hidden longing.

©Laura Sorrells 2012

all rights reserved

Slowly, a new Medicine gathers
within the rumor of shift.
A confluence of hunter
and forest
is bringing me into
its honeyed abundance.
Stay here with me
in this breathing field
of tender audacity.
The edge of immensity
surrounds us,
expressive and kind
in the blossom of
its unfurling depth.

--lks 6/5/12


©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved


I put together this found poem from David Abram's book Becoming Animal, which I am still reading and rereading. This is part of what is more or less a series of such poems. They are pretty much love poems to God, for lack of a better description.

a shared seeing

I can’t quite see the mountain from where I am. Tall trees obscure its tip. A collar of pink clouds rises up from just above it. I am reminded of last October when I wrote about the shedding of old skin and the emptiness that follows. That skin has continued to fall away, mostly, with patches of reclamation here and there. There is loneliness in it but beauty too. A paradox, as ever. I have a little outdoor altar here, with a fading illustration of an artsy greeting-card rabbit amidst a little silver crucifix and a swathe of bright green flowered fabric. Shells and feathers are settling into the damp fabric after today’s rain. A tall spike of some kind of volunteer bulb spreads out across the glass table towards the forest. I light a tall white glass pillar candle and a glass pillar candle with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on it, both brought in with dry wicks from my hearth. A whippoorwhill calls in the woods and I remember that I actually seem to have heard cicadas out at a friend’s horse rescue farm the other night. Seems improbable in May but it sure sounded like cicadas to me.

That night was one of connection, understanding, and conversation offered and shared with tremendous warmth and sincerity. I sat on a log beside a campfire with two people who had heretofore been strangers and talked about my spiritual journey and listened to them talk about theirs. We all believe in paying attention to synchronicity, and we talked about that. We laughed at our own misadventures and at the beautiful incongruities of being human. We talked about sacrifice and how we watch it happen and how some people seem to choose it, to take on the pain of others in a deliberate way, a profoundly unselfish and loving thing that is impossible to explain in words. It sounds trite. Unless you have seen it, it can sound maudlin and empty, platitudinous. But it is not. And I honor it in my heart every day. I know it when I feel it, more than when I see it. It is a palpable energy, a largesse of soul that I do not understand or even envy at this point but which I revere and am grateful for. It felt good to be able to say these things and have them be understood.

And we laughed and ate pizza and they drank a little beer. Finally it began to rain, and as the sweet early-summer smell of grass and hay began to saturate my senses I gathered up my camera and my old serape and the peacock feather one of my new friends had given me and headed home. 

--©Laura Sorrells 2012

all rights reserved

a conversation

Watch for that holy
footprint of fire
you want. Wait for
its kindle
of slowness, its
shiver of wonder
in the naked nightair.
The punctuation of firefly
and hummingbird
is also
a conversation
of love, a tender scribble
of wistful nakedness,
true and constant.
How will you choose
to serve its eruptive
grace?

--lks 2012

I culled this found poem from Coleman Barks' collection of his own poetry, Winter Sky.

a different brightness

A dialect of melancholy

haunts the wild desire path

you shaped for us.

The country I loved is hidden,

its rustic hush a desolation.

The ghost of a thunderstorm

falls across this empty tombolo.

In its edges

I can hear a rising,

primeval and strange,

flooding the well you dug

with a different brightness.

--lks 2012

I got this found poem by putting together words from Barry Lopez's wonderful book Home Ground. 

A Turning

This rich and hungry silence is what I have instead of what I had. The peak of the mountain wants to be more to me than it has been. It doesn’t seem so much a peak as part of something’s body, the body of God perhaps. I keep thinking I want to investigate this thinness that feels thrust upon me, this pruning, this narrowing down and paring away. Of course in some ways it is a richness too. It has spaces where things happen that don’t have a name yet. I will doubtless give them names, probably compound words like webtime or portalhunger or twilightsight.  Poplarsoul. Bearsong. As October begins I feel a turning. It always seems the most liminal of months to me, though I know months are a construct, like time. Its crepuscular denouement moves me and whispers to me. But now it’s just gotten started and the edge of fall is still warm. Its shoulder is just covered with a limning of leafshawl. It smells like loamy earth just turning cold at night. A little bit like rosemary drying into winter, crisp and full of itself but ready to be quiet and still soon. Mixing it up with thyme and fading sage next to the fallen bluebird house by the road.

Saturday’s winds were high and frisky. My mother disliked wind and sometimes I don’t like walking in it but mostly it comforts me when it gets together with the trees. My old gray cat used to play with the wind when it blew across the deck. It took me a couple of times seeing it to get that that’s what he was doing. He’d twirl and dance, trying to catch it in his paws like yarn or thread. I feel a little more alive in strong fall winds. A little more aware of the edge of things, of the delicacy of them and of how they sing when they break, like glass or the creaking throat of a bent branch.

Crickets have long since replaced the cicadas of summer. They’re shyer with their song. Last month a cicada got stuck in the glass door and clacked and buzzed much of the night. I tried to find it to set it free but I never could. The color of cicada song is a brassy goldenrod and that of crickets is auburn. I hear my own thoughts in how the crickets move their legs and wings. I hope to do that still when they stop, or maybe what I hear will lead me into some other way of knowing. Some other lingua franca, not sound but something else, like signing or the raised tininess of Braille. Just as tricky to learn perhaps. It will take me awhile to get it. Maybe I never really will; maybe my gestures and how I see the tug of shapes will always need refining. That threshold place is not new to me and I am comfortable with it. Its iterations shift shape like the colors of the horse in the Wizard of Oz but its soul is somehow familiar ground, a gentle pocosin of soft wet earth and hidden birds that fly up suddenly into sky, miraculous, wild, and free. 

©Laura Sorrells 2011

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