Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
N C L R ONLINE
2013 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST
No Ordinary Birdsong by Susan Laughter Meyers
I know not to look near the driveway among the loblollies in the cushion of pine straw and the gossip of bees. Perplexing, these hours without you. I am no longer any self I recognize despite my favorite faded t-shirt with its maps are for lovers. If this is a treasure hunt I’m getting warm. Close and closer, I can tell, feeling the steady breath of your coaxing. You are almost beside me, sure footed and smiling, a bag of birdseed on your shoulder. Almost beside me. Or is the found path thick with vines? Ones that mimic the spell of small, tight strawberries – impassable vines, studded with thorns. How the least scratch makes you bleed. And lately looms the greater danger should you, out alone somewhere, stumble on a root and hit your head. Ants and spiders, curious, unalarmed – would climb the sprawl. Disaster, nothing new to these woods. Once we saw a hawk on a limb pluck
“Flower Song” for Mockingbird (mixed media, collage, assemblage, 21x18) by Ray Elmore
a cardinal, that ravishing drift of red. Gone, too, a few trees to pine beetles. Jasmine has spilled its spring bash of stars over the fence and up the limbs of a cedar. Do you still want me to prune the camellias on the side acre? I’m listening for your clear whistle that sounds like no ordinary birdsong either of us can identify. Or for you to call my name.
Greenville, NC, resident Ray Elmore is Professor Emeritus of ECU, where he taught for over thirty years. His art has previously appeared on the cover of NCLR 1994. He received his BFA at the Maryland Institute, College of Art and his MFA at the University of Michigan. His works appear in many private collections, as well as in the North Carolina Museum of Art; Cornell University; the Fendrick Gallery in Washington, DC; and the Greenville Museum of Art, which will present a one-man exhibit of his work in 2014.
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