Showing posts with label Nature Poems by Brenda Kay Ledford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nature Poems by Brenda Kay Ledford. Show all posts

Monday, October 27, 2008

Where I'm From

I am from patchwork quilts,
from Lava soap and lavender.
I am from the red plank house,
clay dirt baking in the sun.
I am from the jonquils,
the queen pippin,
fried apple pies.
I'm from storytelling,
from Granddaddy Bob and Uncle Bill.
I'm from farmers
plowing cornfields with mules,
hard-working, Appalachian folks.

I'm from a chapel in the woods,
shape-note music,
a circut-riding Methodist preacher,
the King James Bible.

I'm from Hyatt Mill Creek,
cornbread and buttermilk.
From Great-Granddaddy Dallas Matheson
planting a peach orchard
on Shewbird Mountain.

In my closet is a shoebox
spilling old pictures,
Scots-Irish ancestors,
my Cherokee Indian grandmother.
I am from the Blue Ridge Mountains
of western North Carolina,
scraps of history pieced
into a Lone Star quilt.
--Brenda Kay Ledford