Her Words, and: The Bowl

TWO POEMS George Ella Lyon HER WORDS You gotta strap it on she would say to me there comes this hardship an you gotta git on up the creek —there's others beside you— so you strap it on Oh, you give St. Jude what he'll take hand it over like persimmons with the frost on it ain't nothin there's more stones in that river than you've stepped on or are about to Once your hands can git around sumac once your feet know the lash of a snake you'll strap it on that's what a good neck an shoulders are for In winter at the settlement school our wet hair would freeze on the sleepin porch and we'd wake up vain younguns that we were under blankets of real snow Come Christmas we'd walk sixteen miles home to Redbird mission 36 only once gittin lost in the woods snowed over down the wrong ridge Nobody's askin for what ain't been doen— build against cold an death scalds the dark— you strap it on there's strength in the bindin I scrubbed on a board I know what it's about THE BOWL There is a great bowl made by the potters at Bybee. It is large enough for a lily's roots to swim and unfurl the lily. You could bathe an infant in it or a dog. Like a good poem it is functional. It is clay. It is what the potters at Bybee call their work. George Ella Lyon is director of the Appalachian Poetry Project at the University of Kentucky. 37 ...