Monday, November 19, 2018

Beverly Finney's "Home Place" after Douglas Grant


AOPCV's Patricia Deaton reads the poem in front of the Douglas Grant painting that inspired poet Beverly Finney on October 13 at Hickory Museum of Art. The poem feels appropriate to begin this holiday week. Happy Thanksgiving to all!


HOME PLACE
by Beverly Finney
after Over Yander by Douglas Grant

Up the winding road around the curve of the hill
where the land flattens and spreads a meadow
under the hickories, maples and oaks,
stands the place that will always be home.
Not just the structure, its two-story addition,
a slightly sagging roof, the old stone chimneys,
but the way it always meets me with arms open,
invites me in with warmth, offers me sanctuary.
In its corners, soft sepia memories linger
like the smell of hickory smoke primed
in the timbers, its windows, muted paintings
of pastures, fields, fences and sunsets.
The porches still whisper stories dropped
in the dark cracks between planks, and occasional
echoes of laughter sift in shafts of sunlight.
Up the way on Turkey Knob, hemlocks and pines,
now sparse, still keep watch over all that wakes
and sleeps below lulled by the simple music
of Sweeten Creek weaving easily in and around,
then under the narrow bridge to the next field.
It is the place I come to drink from the clear spring,
climb the Knob and look out over what matters
when everything else asks too much of me.
It’s where I remember who I am and where
I come from, the place I go to get right with myself.




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