BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006<\/p>\n
Judy Loest lives in Knoxville and, like many fine Appalachian writers, her poems have a welcoming conversational style, rooted in that region’s storytelling tradition. How gracefully she sweeps us into the landscape and the scene!<\/p>\n
Leaves drift from the cemetery oaks onto late grass,
\nSun-singed, smelling like straw, the insides of old barns.
\nThe stone angel’s prayer is uninterrupted by the sleeping
\nVagrant at her feet, the lone squirrel, furtive amid the litter.<\/p>\n
Someone once said my great-grandmother, on the day she died,
\nrose from her bed where she had lain, paralyzed and mute
\nFor two years following a stroke, and dressed herself–the good
\nSunday dress of black crepe, cotton stockings, sensible, lace-up shoes.<\/p>\n
I imagine her coiling her long white braid in the silent house,
\nLying back down on top of the quilt and folding her hands,
\nSatisfied. I imagine her born-again daughters, brought up
\nIn that tent-revival religion, called in from kitchens and fields
\nTo stand dismayed by her bed like the sisters of Lazarus,
\nWaiting for her to breathe, to rise again and tell them what to do.<\/p>\n
Here, no cross escapes the erosion of age, no voice breaks
\nThe silence; the only certainty in the crow’s flight
\nOr the sun’s measured descent is the coming of winter.
\nEven the angel’s outstretched arms offer only a formulated
\nGrace, her blind blessings as indiscriminate as acorns,
\nFalling on each of us, the departed and the leaving.<\/p>\n