Free Listen Here by Sandra L. Ballard

her eyes’ blackness, one could trace
The spirit yielding but unbroken still.
    She spoke no word. She seemed to go away
Within herself to some deep silver well
Hewed in the granite years of yesterday,
Water of wisdom pooled in memory's spell.
    From this deep well, to which each one must go
Alone…alone return, she came back to us then
The smile triumphant on her face—as though
Tears never were…would never be again.

C ICADA ' S S ONG
    from With Thorn and Stone: New and Selected Poems (1968)
    Above the crested waves of summer heat
Cicada's needles dart unceasingly,
Threading a strand of beaded notes complete
And sparkling as a jeweled rosary,
Along the Nile a thousand years ago,
Sifting its sands, children would stop at play
And root brown feet to hear this tremolo
Of needles clicking—as I do today.
    And all who will may hold this jeweled strand
And thread the maze of vanished years to find
That always-summer, ever-childhood land
Within the meadow reaches of the mind
Where golden moments float, untold, along
Uncharted channels—timeless as this song.

S OMEDAY IN A W OOD
    from With Thorn and Stone: New and Selected Poems (1968)
    Death never was a match for me,
So light my feet, so river-strong
My coursing blood. My enemy,
As life and I rushed on headlong,
Could only follow, dark and grim,
Because I could outdistance him.
    But someday in a haunted wood
Of fog and twilight days, when
Time Has blanched my flesh and slowed my blood,
Death will outrun me on the climb.
Then I will face him, take his hand,
Murmur his name, and call him friend.

T HE S TAIR
    from Love-Vine (1953)
    A thousand times I've climbed this curving stair;
A thousand times, a hundred moods and more:
Climbed it in hate, in sorrow and in prayer—
The heart low kneeling, or on wings that soar.
I climbed it on my wedding day, the night
Death made his call, as though to Calvary;
And for such simple things as a better sight
Of dawn or sunset gilding earth for me.
    And one would almost think this curving stair
Would show the scars, some crying evidence
Of all the hundred moods it was made to share:
Keen, piercing grief, or joy, deep and intense.
But all it shows of my life's sun and shade
Are smooth-worn treads my climbing feet have made.

M ARILOU A WIAKTA
    (January 24, 1936–)

    A seventh-generation Appalachian native who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Marilou Awiakta grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with a unique heritage that places her mountain and Cherokee roots in the context of the birthplace of atomic energy. Her earliest experiences, she explains, helped her to blend her love of nature with the nuclear science of her hometown community, which was an exciting “frontier environment where anything seemed possible…. I could study molecules one morning and pick blackberries the next.” She gives her parents credit for helping her learn to value family stories, Appalachian traditions, and classic literature. She currently makes her home in Memphis, Tennessee.
    Earning her B.A. degree in French and English at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, as well as living in France from 1964 to 1967 (where she was an interpreter and her husband, Paul Thompson, was a medical officer for the United States Air Force) honed the poet's sensitivity for language. She has been a prolific writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction since the early 1960s. Her prose and poetry have appeared in many magazines, literary journals, and a number of literary anthologies both in America and abroad. Awiakta has received the Distinguished Tennessee Writer Award (1989), the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature (1991), the Award for Educational Service to Appalachia (1999), and the Appalachian Heritage Writers Award (2000). Selu was a 1994 Quality Paperback Book Club Selection. An audio tape of Selu , read by Awiakta with music by Joy Harjo, received a Grammy nomination in 1996.
    She is a longtime advocate of mixing