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