This week's Poet of the People is Frances J. Pearce. I first met Frances over a decade ago in the low country, where she is a respected fixture of the literary community. I've heard her read at literary events and admired her steady hand when she served as the President of the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Her poetry speaks of family and friends as she observes the passing of days casting her luster on our community of poets.
Mount Pleasant resident Frances J. Pearce is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer whose work has appeared in Archive: South Carolina Poetry Since 2005 (Ninety-Six Press), The Fourth River, North Carolina Literary Review, Kakalak, Fall Lines, I Am a Furious Wish: Anthology of Lowcountry Poets (Free Verse Press), and elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook Those Carolina Parakeets Once Far from Extinct was published by Finishing Line Press. She is a past president of the Poetry Society of South Carolina.
Yorkshire Pilgrimage
On a drizzly August afternoon, Marion, Jo,
Katherine, and I traveled on foot up the perilous
hillside path to find her resting place—not
amongst ancient graves surrounding the church,
but in the walled section beyond the gate, behind
Dunleavy, beside the Drapers. All lined up like patients
in a ward. Black letters on gray granite. Full name.
Dates. A line of verse: Even amidst the fierce flames
the lotus can be planted. A tangle of weeds. Blades
of bright green grass. A lantern leaning against Sylvia’s
headstone, an unfilled basket resting on the mound.
Later, jackets drooping, skin wet, we four pilgrims
filed down the High Street of Heptenstall, passing by
the wafting aroma of mutton pie. The others cut through
occupied pastures and returned to our borrowed rooms
in Ted’s hillside house, a mile from where he buried you.
Alone, I entered a pub, empty except for the German
Shepherd, sporting a red collar, seated next to a window.
Night Sounds in a Neighborhood along the Wando River
Sometimes palmetto fronds
rustling. Sometimes a foghorn
cautioning an approaching ship.
Sometimes the buzz of mosquitoes
out for blood. Sometimes a deafening
boom as lightning ruptures
a loblolly pine. Sometimes the call of
barred owl in pursuit of wharf rats.
Sometimes a shipping container
plummeting to ground at the nearby port.
Sometimes the swish of a car traveling
across wet pavement. Sometimes the
explosion of a transformer. Sometimes
the scream of the vixen calling her mate.
Often the neighbors’ various dogs
barking. One time, a sudden screech
when your speeding truck missed the
curve. Tonight, the floofy cat pretending
I’m her kitten, purring into my ear,
It’s all right. Everything’s all right.