A Country Rag--Occasional Treats

A Country Rag Occasional Treats

January, 2000

Mangolese Goddess, by Sheila A. Sheppard-Sage graphic: Mangolese Goddess, oil on canvas by Sheila A. Sheppard-Sage, SAS Designs, Jonesborough, TN
"I’m delighted that my first poems to appear online are here in Country Rag," said poet Irene Culver. She discovered the site while looking for information about Appalachia, where her dad’s people are from. "I’m very comfortable with the culture, the songs, stories, and sayings, even though I’ve never been there." Culver’s ancestors (Culvers, Fitzpatricks, Winters, and Towles) were Scotch-Irish immigrants who lived in Tennessee, Georgia and Arkansas and finally East Texas. She moved to California as a teenager and has lived there since. She is passionate about finding her ancestor's history and about reading and writing poetry. Her poems have been published in Black Buzzard Review, The Plastic Tower, Bellowing Ark, Sulphur River Literary Review, Poetry Motel, Natural Bridge and others.

"You have riches and freedom here, but I feel no sense of faith or direction. You have so many computers, why don't you use them in the search for love?" -- Lech Walesa, Polish trade union leader and politician

by Irene Culver

The Cure

Half in the barn, half out -- wounded I fell at the grandmother's feet In the dark barn she gathered webs to wind thickly around her left hand, a glove of webs and made of them a poultice for my heart then went on to other tasks.

"Basically, the Internet is not about capitalism and money. It's about people doing what they want to do." -- Joichi Ito, Japanese executive named one of the cyber elite by Time magazine, 1997

2001

Yarn in the millennium woven in woof and weft Barns still standing and haymows rife with owls Stay ill fortunes of laymen -- More tunes yet to be sung! Hung on rafters, wool to dry the loom soon threaded, headed upward toward tomorrow. Borrow songs if you have none. One moon above all farther and farther the end times.

"Of course, love between people could not be allowed -- it interfered with work." -- R.J. Rummel, Death by Government

Singing

Here is the song I came to sing. I sing it because of the rocks and whirlpools in my way. I sing my song loudest and best in the rapids, during the storm, against the crack of lightning and inside the stones.

"Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty." -- unknown

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