Remembering Kay in the Spring . . .. . .

All this green beauty has me remembering Kay Byer, NC's first female poet laureate. She and I shared a love of Garcia Lorca's poem Verde, Que Te Quiero, Verde and the Carolina mountains and their seasons. Kay is gone now, but her words are fresh as ever.

Big Tease

Little by little, the earth sheds

 her veils. Lets her white blossoms 

tremble. The river shakes out her blue

shimmy and scrubs it to smithereens

over the singing rocks, leaving her

sunny side up, such a tease

that I sway to her music

as if I were Salome's sister

and not an old woman who knows

that the inkblot of sky on this page

of my daybook will soon begin fading,

because how can anyone, even Great

Grandaddy Death stay asleep

amid so much awakening?

                                                    Kathryn Stripling Byer