"Gwendoline Y. Fortune is a retired African-American professor of Social Science and History and
a writer, which is her first love. She has written columns for North Carolina and Illinois independent newspapers and has been guest columnist at
others, such as The Raleigh News and Observer. She has completed two novels, including Nigger-Rich, in addition to a play, short stories and other poetry, including a collection titled Dancing as Fast as We Can and Inner Scan. She is
working on a third novel. She is a member of the Appalachian Writers Association, Friday Noon Poets, Off-Campus Writers Workshop and North Carolina Writers Network, and also serves as a member of the Board of the North Carolina Poetry Society." gyf
An Extended Invitation
(from Dancing as Fast as We Can and Inner Scan)
City children scatter pigeons,
leap spit laced, grey cement,
look both ways before darting between
trucks, around cars, and drunks.
City children play ball in parks
decorated in plastic wrap and burger boxes.
I listen to rain spattering dry, red earth
to soft sienna mud.
My birds are twenty-nine different colors,
shapes and sizes and sing in true sound surround.
Country children tumble butt down from forked limbs
into cool, clean water,
and cars moan a mile away, four in a full hour.
I will invite city kids to savor
Mount Nantahala on their tongues,
to spy from open windows
cardinals in the pines behind the shed.
They will applaud when the mad hummingbird
at the apex of his self-appointed triangle,
flies from pole to house to tree
to selfishly frighten competitors
from feeders I accidentally hung in his sight line.
My urban guests will sit in my slatted swing
and stretch their toes toward plump clouds
that tickle mountain tops.
Across the valley a neighbor's hound barks.
A mutt joins. Their duet rivals tenors in Rome.
Little Hannah's cats - who walk on my car
in the chilled dawn - pay no attention.
Bluebirds and chickadees are too smart to be caught.
And the dogs have stopped barking at heaven.
Will they accept my invitation, the city children?
Can they hear the music?
Walking In Fog
Magnolia leaves hang like beaver tails,
sun-up side bright, underneath prosaic brown.
Poplar and oak skeletons are not shamed
by the crisp carpet of leaves.
A beech, spotted like deer tails, waves
a defiant pumpkin crown,
summoning native people
stroking in harmony on frigid lakes.
Trees know at seedling that wind
will tear their crowing glory,
bend and break drying arms.
A branch dangles, losing security.
Does a living thing allow
one part of itself to die;
scarred, seeking sky, sending roots
to carve rocks, weathered,
bending, staying, green and bare?
Across the empty road, behind a fallow field
pines reach forever-
soldiers massed for battle.
Did Sherman, Lee, Cornwallis, or Desoto
notice this hardy beauty,
taste mist, slide on wet leaves,
bend to lift one smooth, red, shining,
hold it, inhale life modulating gold and burr,
a place to cherish?
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