Poem published in Birmingham Arts Journal, Vol. 8 Issue 4

         



                                                              ICE SKATER
                                                                      Betty Spence




                                                              Always be like water
                                                              resounding in his ears,
                                                              fluid moves give a river
                                                              as breakable as bone
                                                              back its ebb and flow.


                                                              Silver-booted blades
                                                              scratch winter tracings
                                                              as fabulous as fishes caught
                                                              on alder limbs dropped into
                                                              holes in Walden's Pond

                                                               iced-over with magic panes.

              * Read Birmingham Arts Journal, online at www.birminghamartsjournal.org. 
                         Editor: Jim Reed...Poetry Editor: Irene Latham...Art Editor: Liz Reed...
                         Production Editor: Kathy Jolley 


                                                             

     Also published in Winter, 2011/2012 was the following poem.

                                      School Children View the Body
                                       Of an 11 Year Old Gang Member

                                
                                                       The picture in the paper
                                                        shows them looking sideways
                                                        into the casket, mothers hovering.
                                                      
                                                        Robert, better known as Yummy,
                                                        (he could live on animal crackers)
                                                        was to start sixth grade in the fall.
   
                                                        To find the hidden picture
                                                         look for a boy putting his tousled head
                                                         in the lion's mouth.                 
                                                                            BS
                                                       
                                                         * Lora Zill is editor of TOS

Time of Singing, Winter 2011/2012

        "Eighty-Something" took second place in Time of Singing               Winter 2011/2012 Contest, "It's a Wonderful Life." 
          
                                         Eighty-Something
                                                             After "coming into Eighty" by May Sarton

                            
                               I think I shall live to be eighty-something--
                     I've seen how loath old poets are to leave.
                     Stick-figures in wind-puffed sleeves
                     staring down an ocean of words unsaid,
                     languishing for want of naming things
                     to others and themselves.

                     I've seen them piping like shore birds
                     on finding half-buried in the sand
                     a bottle thrown into a river at flood stage,
                     a bottle, for all I know, bearing the words:
                     Write the vision, and make it plain.

                     For all the times time has hurried me
                     I think I shall live to worry time along.
                     Already half-past the wakefulness of noon,
                     I'd like to live to sleep-in, sleep-off poems,
                     live until lines in my face story forth,

                     live long enough to give away whatever
                     to whomever I please and be the richer for it.
                     I'll say goodbye but once--and that at the gate.
                     You can, if you like, watch me out of sight.   
                                                                                        --BS

Harp-Strings Poetry Journal

New publication: Harp-Strings Poetry, Winter 2012.  
Editor: Madelyn Eastlund

Home from peddling turnip greens,

Daddy poured it out like small worries

on the kitchen floor.  Mama, who could

all but see germs passed from hand to hand,

wouldn't have it any other way.

That she never took a shine

two what we children were so taken by

had something to do with always having to

count it out to somebody else.

But me and my brothers... I wish

you could have seen us in the money...

coin striking coin, coins rolling

like runaway wheels across fields

of green and brown linoleum.

You would have thought us proper tellers

the way we stacked together what goes together

--pennies, nickels,quarters, dimes... 

We knew all along the silver,

as Daddy called it, was not ours to keep.

Ours was the feel of it, round and smooth,

the weight of it heavy in the palm of your hand.

Ours was to count it and to know great sums.

And having this, we were content

to wrap it in little banker's sleeves

that tell (in part) what it all comes to.

                              --Betty Spence

"In the Money" received first place in the 1997

National Federation of State Poetry Societies

Founders Award category and was pulblished

in NFSPS' 1997 Encore.

Poems in "Time of Singing", Summer 2011

The following poems were recently published in "Time of Singing" a Christian poetry journal.

Storming
   Isaiah 45:3

There is this
about pursuing
Presence--
you might just find yourself
in that secret place
where storms
go to die.
           BS

Rich in Sunrise

He amassed his wealth
panning for gold
settled at the heart
of sun streams
rivering
an Alabama sky
at first light.
           BS

Quote from "Breath for the Bones" by Luci Shaw

Luci Shaw is one of my favorite poets and writers. Here are a few lines of hers I would like to share with you.

On cultivating creativity, she says, "Among the things that good literature involves are elements of inevitably
and surprise--essential to all arts. A well-wrought work gives the sense that this is the way it was inevitably meant to be, and part of that certainty comes from the surprises in it, words in unusual juxtaposition, fresh ideas that give us a little jolt of astonishment.
     Yet there is another community that informs the creative life: friendship, which is formed with others who share a conviction of faith and a dedication to artistic process."

In Search of Enduring Alabama Voices

In Search of Enduring Alabama Voices.

My piece, "In Search of Enduring Alabama Voices" won 3rd place in the non-fiction category of the Alabama Writers' Conclave annual competition. I Attended the awards banquet in Huntsville, AL where the AWC conference was held July 15-17.


"In Search of Enduring Alabama Voices" is also in the online journal, Alalitcom 2011.
The web address is Alalit.com.

In Search of Enduring Alabama Voices

When at the age of 39 I became a student at the University of South Alabama primarily to study creative writing, I had no idea I was a ready poetry-writing student. I had begun to publish articles in religious publications, but I was not into poetry and knew next to nothing about finding one’s voice as a writer— let alone as a poet. But as they say, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” In my case the “teacher” was Walter Darring, an accomplished artist and poet in his own right—and to think I signed up for his poetry writing class thinking it might be a breeze. As it turned out, it was, indeed, a breath of fresh air.

Mr. Darring was so passionate about poetry and the craft of writing poetry I came to think of him as an apostle of poetry. I had never heard of James Dickey or his poems. But listening to Mr. Darring read Dickey’s poem, “Falling” based on the experience of a 29-year-old stewardess falling out of an airplane through an emergency door that suddenly sprung open, was a spiritual experience.

            Studying poetry writing with Mr. Darring, (I took every course he offered) stirred to life a an emerging poetic voice I didn’t know I had. By the time I earned a BA degree with a
concentration in Creative Writing in 1978, writing poetry had become a viable form of expression for me. Even so, not all of my poems, then or now, pour onto the page. Some of my would-be poems turn out to be vocal warm-ups. A good many poems I wrote to fulfill an assignment were off-key and out of range. But now and again an assignment brought forth a poem like “Inner Resources” that sang itself.

                                                                   Inner Resources

When the impulse came

To spend myself

I held nothing back.

Spent…

It’s gone now,

All means of exchange.

Unless,

Unless a hidden coin

Lies buried

                                                                   In a second purse.

                                                                                 *

           

     To be sure, studying creative writing at USA exposed me to different fields of knowledge that put me in touch with the voice within. One threshold moment occurred in the listening library where I came upon a recording featuring street cries and work songs collected and vocalized by Julian Lee “Judy” Rayford, a noted Mobile writer, poet, artist and folklorist. Peddlers’ songs rising, falling, and breaking into falsetto resonated with me.  

     I couldn’t imagine an acclaimed Mobile literary figure celebrating folk ways of peddlers

and their kind and for the first time I knew “their kind” included me. I came from a long line of peddlers of one sort or another. Both my grandfathers peddled as did my daddy—Raymond D. Smith, alias Banana Man, Green Man, Watermelon Man. While my forbears’ street cries, field 

hollers, and work songs had not been recognized among my kin as folk art, Rayford’s renditions accented with florid syllables and melismas put words in my mouth.

     Shortly before “Judy” Rayford’s death, I got his permission to use his strawberry street cry in a poem about my grandpa Smith who in his day peddled fruit in and around downtown Mobile.

Strawberries

  Over cobblestones,

   Round Bienville Square,

  Papa Shep peddled

    Old Mobile, singing,

    Strawberries, Straa…berries,

      Stee…raa…berries.

 

      I’ll be glad

    When grapes git chere.

 Before I became

A peddler of thought

 I yearned for a

Legacy other than,

   Strawberries, Straa…berries,

Stee…raa…berries.

    I’ll be glad

 When grapes git chere.

         But now that age

          And reflection

          Sweeten berry and vine,

            I am content.

           *    

     Like Papa Shep, Daddy was a born peddler. Mama, too. But she had a soul above peddling. She had her fill of peddlery as a child. When she was a girl Grandpa Tillman ran a fruit stand on the corner of Old Shell Road and Tacon Street in Crichton, Al. Her family lived on Tacon and early of a morning she had to run up to the stand to help Grandpa set up, which often made her late for school. Embarrassed at being tardy, she found excuses to stay home. Mama had a bright mind but with no encouragement to get an education, she only finished fifth grade. Even though Daddy managed to make a good living for Mama and me and my two brothers, Mama loathed his business. Nonetheless, by the time I was around 10 years old Daddy had become a successful tradesman who bought bananas wholesale at the at the Banana Docks at the waterfront in Mobile and fresh produce at the Farmer’s Market. Being ever a lover of the green road; the verdant field, Daddy hauled his produce “up the country”  to retail markets in the vicinity of Thomasville, Al.

     That day in the listening library brought to mind going as a little girl sometimes to the docks with Daddy to wait for the banana boat to come in. A poem of Rayford’s featuring a work song heard around the turn of the century on the banana docks in Mobile, inspired a poem of my own.

                                                      Song of the Banana Man

Awakened by some inner clock,

You move by memory

Through the sleeping house

Of childhood dreams.

In the stillness

You sing your song.

Git ‘em green there, Johnny git ‘em green!

Come on here, boy!

Pick it up! Pick it up!

Tote ‘em on down, son—on down the line.

For you, song-singer

Whose hands and back

Made a living conveyor track,

I take up a refrain

Tote ‘em on down a long time, sweet daddy!

a long time, sweet daddy!

Tote ‘em on down the line—take ‘em away.

     Some time before Daddy stopped hauling produce he built a small grocery store in the edge of our front yard on the corner of Springhill Avenue and Page Street which Mama operated. She

had a good business head and knew how to turn a profit. In the early 50’s, however, poor health forced her to retire from full time work. Later, when Daddy quit hauling he turned the concrete block store building into a stock room and curb market which he ran until his peddler’s heart began to fail in his green old age.

            With only a 7^th grade education Daddy worked for himself, possessed a venture, and assumed accountability for the outcome, yet he was an unsung entrepreneur. In Mama’s eyes

Daddy would forever be a peddler. One of the things Mama detested was that Daddy’s stock was perishable and if he didn’t have a quick turn-over, he had to absorb the loss. I can still see Daddy at the kitchen sink paring away dark spots in over-ripe Chilton County peaches—sweet yellow juice flowing between chapped, work-strutted fingers. In the summer we always had big bowls of luscious culls in the refrigerator.

            In 1981 a picture of daddy’s curb market painted by Mobile artist, Kathy Whitinger

was one of 11 original paintings of Mobile landmarks which appeared in the Junior League

of Mobile’s “One of a Kind” cookbook. Daddy ran his “one of a kind” curb market into his late 70’s. Following Mama and Daddy’s deaths—they died within eight months of each other in 1998, the home place was sold and the dilapidated fruit stand with its walk-in coolers and storage rooms was torn down. Today, if not for the lay of the land, you wouldn’t know the place. What

went for real is clean gone. All that’s left is what daddy fashioned out of air… and to think Mama had no use for words that make more sound than sense. She begged Daddy to save his

dying breath. But she might as well have saved her own. For having outlived the cold and

and caution of decline, his songs—and mine,  go on and on:

Got turnip greens and mustard greens;

White velvet okre for yo butterbeans.

Come to think of it, perhaps I sound most like myself when I sing in a voice I didn’t choose, but which chose me—the challenge being to speak authentically, sincerely from the heart. Perhaps my true voice emerges when I try to imitate the rumblings of long, narrow display tables on wheels Daddy called “gondolas.” Or sound the jingle-jangle of dangling silver-blue pan scales Daddy didn’t need, to tell how many Sand Mountain tomatoes make a pound.

Please Ma’am, don’t mash the tomatoes!

Fifty cents a pound, Ma’am, three pounds, a doller.

Acknowledgments

            Thanks are due to the editors of the following magazines, in which the poems cited in this

article appeared: Inner Resources, Channels, Encore, Looking South, Sampler; Strawberries,

Negative Capability, Rhyme and Reason, Song of the Banana Man, Mobile Bay Monthly.