Poetry of the People's Featured Poet - Libby Bernardin

This week's Poet of the People is Libby Bernardin. Libby is not only a gifted poet, she is a kind and gracious human being. Meeting her is a spring morning where you feel confident the world will go on and you belong in it. She makes you feel important and not the other way around. Reading her poetry is the warm air of a furnace at your feet while sipping tea at her dining room window while she tells you the history of every bush and flower in her yard.

Libby Bernardin is the author of House in Need of Mooring and Stones Ripe for Sowing, both published by Press 53. She has published two chapbooks and contributed to many journals. She has won poetry awards from the Poetry Society of SC and the NC Poetry Society, and is a member of both poetry societies. She is a lifetime member of the Board of Governors of the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She writes and shares new work with The River Poets, a group of women who are dedicated to poetry.

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The Price for Long Lives is Sorrow

 

You could say a long and measured life walks with a dream,

mysteries clotheslined across the sky blowing like sheets—

Words keep unpinning     unfolding     letters spelling

out worn-out stories. What am I to do with Joseph

of the many-colored coat, an imprisoned Hebrew

 

with God-inspired dream talk. Pharaoh chose

him who stored the grain to save plague-torn Egypt.

 

And where are the Josephs among us?

 

The would-be king thank God is gone.  We have a new leader.

May he be among the long lived for we the people

who haven’t the courage of a sharecropper’s son

crossing the bridge—first to violence, last to peace,

always his aim. His caisson marches. Remember his

long life of sorrows, his scattered good-trouble seeds

 

like wildflowers—purple fringed     lily-leaved     sweet shrub

spicebush     bloodroot uproot into the world     blossom     blossom.

 

 (Included in House in Need of Mooring)

Again,                                                            

 

morning moon    Pink    among leaves  

 

drops into the West    

flirting I think    

with me

 

demure as a silken scarf

 plucked

            by a sly wind

 

to flutter out

the window

from a bed side table

 

the barest hint of liminal—

 

O Holy Space 

that winters where you bloom—

light another day

 

dreams now ebb 

into darkness as the croon

of a white crowned sparrow

   

lilting notes distinctive

as its pink bill     opens the day—

and    here      yet again     anew

 

 (Italicized line from David Havird’s poem, “Midnight Oil”, included in his book, Weathering)

~~~

 

 Litany                                                                                                                                                                                                  

 As the world holds beauty in the deep and lonely forests

                                    Conduct me in wonder

As the moon rises high enough for me to see from my bedroom window

                                    Conduct me in fascination

As the woodpecker pecks around the pecan tree burl

                                    Conduct me in pleasure

As the white camellia layers its petals, pinwheels of sighs

                                    Conduct me in love

As the iris blue flag flutters in a wind

                                    Conduct me in resilience

As the hatching from mother alligator swims confidently in briny water

                                    Conduct me in gentle laughter

As the snake sheds its skin, leaves it on the rim of my strawberry pot

                                    Conduct me in respect

As the red-winged black bird breeds in marshes and scrubby fields

                                    Conduct me in new life

As starling murmuration creates angular shapes of dark clouds over Norway

                                    Conduct me in astonishment

As I wonder about the god hiding, languishing in the star-filled sky

                                    Conduct me in faith

As I hold my hand over my heart about suffering in Ukrainian photos

                                    Conduct me in compassion, in mercy

As I cover my eyes in anguish over the murder of children in Uvalde

                                    Conduct me in mourning and right action

As there is any inequity in my hands, ire in my heart

                                    Conduct me in truth, the morally right, the just

As I have lived a long life of love complex as the moon’s pull of tides

the sight of the Southern Cross in Brazil, the birth, the birth, the birth

Conduct me in knowledge, grace, heart

   

~~~                            

 

Shreveport 1954, Before the Late Crowd                     

  

It was a barrel of a room. music a boom

from speakers, the sultry drumbeat

as though a queen arrived expecting voices

with hands full of dollar bills, me sitting

between my cousin and her husband—

and before me, a beauty with stars on her tits

and I guess a G-string—oh she was stacked

and shone like she could make it in LA.

So, what’s she doing in this raunchy beer-smelling

place with me feeling sorry for her, as we watched

those long stockinged legs—a garter for dollars—

wrap themselves around a pole, no moola

anywhere I could see—early patrons

just eatin’ peanuts over at the bar,

knocking down a few—then the MC

introduces a Miss Douget? here on her 18st

birthday give’er a hand, guys, c’on put ‘em together

for the Carolina girl, and me turning around to see her,

Miss Douget. Miss Douget? then my cousin elbowing

me and whispering, Stand up, stand up, take a bow

which I reckon I did, stunned—Did I hear a drum roll?
I awkwardly stood up, sat down red-faced—beauty

blowing me kisses, gingerly.No warily.

Later that night, I thought of her pole dancing

on my birthday, and I hoped she would make it to LA,

and I would find her on the cover

of Photoplay Magazine, far away from

that vacuous room, empty except

for a few beer-barrel guys with no money

in their hands for her garter.

 

After “Nashville After Dark” by Ada Limon

 

~~~

A Photograph, February 23, 1934                                                  

 

Forever in sepia on their wedding day—

Their lives unreel as moonflowers

open to the dark sky

Or early evening primroses uncurl at dusk

 

A light wind scatters leaves and twigs

I put down the photograph     

on my kitchen counter—

            begin to knead my dough     think of how

mother rolled her biscuits in the palm of her hand.

 

Once, after a hurricane snapped off tree crowns

from the tallest pines     felled a thick

                                    limb from the old oak

wrapping Spanish moss around and around

a twig, yet      not even in two hours green burst forth

 

light ladled on trees

in the longingly pure air—Father came

home     the day’s shift done

puts his hands on Mother’s

waist     pulls her slightly to him

plants a kiss in her hair

 

I am calm watching them    

I was always calm watching them

 

I look out my window

I think     how young they are     I could swoon

            at their fierce beauty    Did I come to soon

 crush of time already            

                                               

burdensome—remind me

how quickly storms shift from high winds to breezy jasmine scents

            love returns                 yearns for better times

~~~

About Yesterday…

 

It’s always behind us

holding on to what needs to go—my husband’s death,

your divorce—those days left us brooding

under a dappled bluesy sky

 

Today you and I alive with the sun’s

glint on the loquat tree, breakfast on the porch—frittata of onion

& mushrooms served with avocado

We watch the young flicker feed, furtive, wary

 

                        We take solace in our past

for me the farm, Grandfather and Grandmother in their kitchen—

he rolls his cigarette, watches her, hands in biscuit dough

their yesterday in growing crops, feeding field hands

 

You at play on the river,

fishing, your stories of Daddy Ben & how he taught you hunting

ethics—kill only what you will eat, waste nothing of your catch

be a good master to the pup I give you

 

So about yesterday, it’s behind us

flits of memory—lost loves we can’t catch, grief rendered

            useless, the choices we made, but look here—this poem

                        I wrote for you on the desk you made for me