Issue 7
June 2001
Harding Stedler
Five years ago, I retired from teaching at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, OH, after 34 years in the classroom. Today, I work at a local publishing house, designing Language Arts materials for elementary-school youngsters. And, this is my third and final term as secretary of the Poets' Roundtable of Arkansas.
As Professor of English at Shawnee State, where I spent my final seventeen years of teaching, I was a charter member of the South Central Ohio chapter of Phi Delta Kappa, housed at SSU. I also founded and advised The Phoenix Writers, a fraternity of poets at the University. I continue to conduct their fall writers' conference held at Murphin Ridge Inn, in September, in Amish country of Southern Ohio.
All work © Harding Stedler
TWO TEETH AND PURPLE
She glanced a two-toothed smile
at her morning dogs,
then faded among the vines
where peas turn purple
on the edge of slanting sun.
Today, she lives an August dream
grown ripe by months of hoeing.
She fills her apron with supper hulls
to shell beneath the shade
where she can cast aside her bonnet.
She ripens with the peas
again this year,
her leathery skin a glossy hue,
three score and ten years dark.
One with the Delta sand she works,
she returns to earth
the remnants of her harvest,
grins her two-toothed pride
on the only land she knows.
FREE FOR THE ITCHING
Apparently, the chiggers were as hungry
for human flesh
as I was for blackberries,
for I returned home with as many bites
as I had berries.
Self-appointed guardians of the berry vines,
these microscopic hexapods
objected to my scouring
country roads
and left me with blotches
as reminders.
The pie is gone now,
but the blotches are not.
And I am not convinced free berries
are worth the price of itching.
ANSWERING THE CALL
I woke from thunder-sleep
in the wilderness cabin
on the eve of June
as sideways rain
served as my alarm.
The dawn had yet to break
when I was summoned
from distant sleep.
I yielded to the urgency,
opened the door,
and imbibed morning's first chorus,
a blend of winged and walking songs
filtered by the pines.
The sounds were acoustically right...
and pure. An audience of one,
I started my day on a symphony.