Kentucky

gathered for Aunt Lottie was inside I took the quill and pulled it softly the case, too, their smell and color over the strings. And Aunt Lottie was stolen by time. there. Billy C. Clark now teaches at Somerset Community College, Kentucky. This story, "The Death of Aunt Lottie", is reprinted by permission from his book Sourwood Tales published by Putnam and copyrighted by Billy C. Clark in 1968. Sourwood Tales contains some of Billy C. Clark's finest stories—the humorous ones richly in the tradition of American humorists such as Mark Twain and those like "The Death of Aunt Lottie" that are more poignant and sympathetic with the human condition. Sourwood Tales is now out of print and in great need of being reprinted. KENTUCKY To Earl Lockwood This is a mountain of immortal clay, A land offiddle and the horsetail bow, Night promenading feet shuffling to play Ofhomespun ballads lonesome as a crow; A land ofmoon where dancing lovers turn And tiptoe quiet the foot ofmountain slope Low-whispering among grey beech and fern Shadow-secret dreams oflove and hope. Upon this lonely ridge time-scarred I stand With feet deep-rooted in ancestral clay By choice to claim Kentucky as my land As did my kind, their kin, another day. By choice to be with sawbriared, sandstoned earth Cocooned forever in my land ofbirth. - Billy C. Clark 22 ...