Tag: Poverty

Behind Green Eyes: A Child of the Ozarks

On By Dennis McHaleIn Beauty, Love, Motivational, Photgraphy, Poetry, Relationships, Speaking, Uncategorized, Writing8 Comments

Ozark Girl

Photo Credit: Jeff Jones, Photographer
(image of his daughter, Valerie)

Skin softly bleached like the Southern twilight
freckle-kissed face ‘neath the Ozark ‘s skylight
fire-red locks and curls tossed by stormy winds
Pa’s softly-pressed dimple upon her boyish chin

     Green eyes revealing her faded innocence
     a determined gaze, a child’s jaded reverence
     for a young life lived beneath the savage blows
     of poverty’s yoke, though no one knows
     for this girl who bravely looks right through you
     wears a forthright courage, honest and true

She rides a bitter storm that’s never-ending
twelve tender years in fields deep-bending
with calloused hands plucking earth’s creations
like her kinfolk have done for generations

     Laughing like a banshee, she dances in the rain
     holding back her tears as she swallows her pain
     A motherless child born to a colorless world 
     still she sings of a future, of hope yet unfurled
     she sings of the woods, and the trails, and the streams
     of infinite hope and impossible dreams

She could never be pressed to surrender this hour
‘neath the soft Ozark moonbeams that fill her with power
to endure what she must, though she’s only a child
under dark gathering clouds she stands there beguiled
filled with wonder and light behind a soft-freckled face
she presents to the world the persona of grace

Bourgeois

On By Dennis McHaleIn Motivational, Poetry, Relationships, Speaking, Uncategorized, War, WritingLeave a comment

Image
You,
with your aphoristic charms,
you dance without a care
and sip absinthe into the sleepless dawn,
all smiles and laughter within your elite
and esoteric gaggle of bright-eyed friends.

You,
in your grizzly glazed stupor,
your haze of self-absorption and carefree bon-vivant;
you cannot bear to acknowledge footman or maid,
their lives running parallel to yours,
their ruddy captured faces reflected
sullen in the polished silver trays;
each truffle they carry would deliver them
and those they love from a blighted existence
drenched in shame and servitude.

Dance on
you, who will always be
oblivious in your ease and merriment,
of the pain and the hunger tumbling
from the rim of your cornucopia.

Them Logs

On By Dennis McHaleIn Motivational, Poetry, Relationships, Travel, Uncategorized, Writing4 Comments

logs

The logs that was put in that barn
are up there until this day, an’ it turns out,
they were made by my Gran’pa
an’ were a part of his home a mile up this here creek
where he lived an’ where my kinfolk are resting.
Those logs are older than my Ma.
She was borned in that house after they moved there,
an’ she was borned ‘round 1891.

Yep, them logs has been there some.

An’ the house was there an’ them logs,
an’ twice since we’ve taken over the land,
since they all be gone an’ sweetly passed away,
someone has approached me to buy them logs.
An’ the first one offered me eighty dollars for the logs.
An’ Lord knows, we needs the money
‘cept I can’t sell them. They’s history in em.

They are still sound ‘cept where they’re layin’ on the ground.
The ones that were axed an’ are in the earth,
look as perfect as the day they were put there!
An’ it was only last week that my kinfolk that live up there
said some man ask him to talk to me could he buy them.
An’ they had been there that long.
But I reckon I won’t sell them,
cause they has my Gran’pa’s sweat in them.
At least eighty-five years since I’ve been here.
An’ my Pa–there’s his axe marks
where he made them, on them very same logs.

Mountain Hogs

On By Dennis McHaleIn Motivational, Poetry, Relationships, Travel, Uncategorized, Writing1 Comment

mountain hogs

Why, they would sleep, them hogs,
would stay right back in them mountains
and under cliffs and brambles and things.
But these old timers, my grandpa and my uncles,
would be whoopn’ and shoutin’ to the hills,
calling his hogs, to go to the barn, and buddy,
they’d come out of them mountains a flyin’!
He’d feed them corn, and just as soon as they et
right back in them mountains they’d go.
And they got learnt to that, they did,
and about feeding time every evenin’
they’d come out all by themselves.

But in the summertime you’d never see one.
They’d stay right where they could get plenty
of mast and roots and stuff to eat.
They’d stay right in them hills, them hogs would,
growing fat n’ orn’ry like!
And there’s bunch of wild hogs here,
and my mother, she’d sent me to school
and I’d run into a bunch of these old timers
going a wild hog huntin’ they were.
They’d have three or four old dogs tied up,
with plow lines, big long ropes,
and I’d go hog huntin’ with them ‘stead of school.

I’d follow and they’d head right to these tree stands
at the top of the hill and that’s where you’d find em.
I’d seen their teeth sticking out this far right side of there
and the dogs would run one down,
run him ‘til he got tired and he’d be fighting them dogs!
And them old timers would walk up
and they’d use an old caliber called 25.
And shot a shell about half-finger long.
They’d take him right between the eyes
and kill it.

Drag it out, two or three of them would,
right down the mountainside, and git it to the creek
and they’d come to the house all puff’d up on ‘shine,
get their mule n’ sled, and they would load him up
and haul him to down yonder to the house.
After a spell when they’d be all licker’d up
and sangin’ and hollerin’ and carryin’ on
they’d hang em by his feet upside down
‘bout shoulder high on a sour maple,
and they’d bleed him.

We’d be dancin’ and sangin’ and hollerin’
and eatin’ like kings come Sunday.

Before the Chestnut Blight (Part I)

On By Dennis McHaleIn Motivational, Poetry, Relationships, Travel, Uncategorized, Writing1 Comment

chestnuts

 

Old people had them a sayin’,
that when the chestnuts bloomed,
they were so tall they stood straight
up above them other trees,
‘n they’d say ‘the snow is in the Mountain.’

Well, we had chestnut trees,
before the blight come in.
When my daddy cleared the ground,
you know to farm –
it was covered with chestnut trees.
He’d sifted out about an acre of chestnut trees,
for our pikcin’ up use.

‘N when they would get ready ‘n start falling.
We would get our sacks ‘n buckets ‘n stuff,
‘n the men would get up in the trees with big poles
‘n they’d thrash them out ‘n we’d pick em up

But, when they fall, usually the burrs open on the tree,
‘n they fall as they come down.
You don’t ever touch that burr,
you get those needles in your fingers, that’s bad.
You stay away from that.
You just pick the chestnuts up. They’re on the ground.
Now ‘n then you find a burr open with the chestnuts in it
‘n you can take your foot, if you got shoes on,
‘n step on them, ‘n they’ll come out.
After it frosts, they’re easy.

Anyways, we’d get them in them sacks
‘n take them to the chicken house, ‘n hang them in thar,
the empty house, it had been a chicken house,
but we had et the chickens, ‘n it were empty.

You hardly ever, at that time,
a chestnut with a worm in it.

 

Before the Chestnut Blight (Part II)

On By Dennis McHaleIn Motivational, Poetry, Relationships, Speaking, Uncategorized, WritingLeave a comment

Chestnut Tree

I’d say the chestnut tree
kept a lot of mountain people from starving to death.
Because if you was out in the mountain,
you wasn’t going starve to death.
There was too many chestnuts.
You might get tired of eating them,
but you wouldn’t starve to death.
And people used them back at that time.
You see, people used so many of them.
They would boil them for their young’uns and everything.
Because there wasn’t no running out there to the store.
There wasn’t no such thing as going to the store back then.
Nobody didn’t have it.
And they used that to survive, a lot of them did,
to keep from starving.
They sold them.
You didn’t run to the fruit market up there
just every time you’d need something.
No we didn’t.

Opposite Sides of the Same Pain

On By Dennis McHaleIn Poetry, UncategorizedLeave a comment

A Sunni mother silently watches:
overhead, a gathering of scavenging ravens
paints the dusky sky
above the broken bodies of her three children.
Bewilderment mixed with horror and beauty,
accented by the pebbles beneath her feet,
polished smooth by a flood of tears.
An acrid wind swirls
with scattered hope and broken dreams;
confetti raining on freshly scorched earth.
Another womb is rent in unbearable grief
at the loss of its precious fruit.

In that very moment, across the sea,
a Haitian waif reflects:
a flock of seagulls angrily position
above the ghetto garbage heap,
next to crumbling shanty
where her newborn triplets scream with hunger.
Bewilderment mixed with horror and beauty,
the waste beneath her feet glistens
with the flood of her tears.
The stench of rotting wind swirls
with scattered hope and broken dreams;
flies rising up from quaked earth.
Another womb is rent in unbearable grief
at the bounty of its damnable fruit.