Read Online Listen Here by Sandra L. Ballard - Free Book Online Page B

waited too long,” and then her father's voice, flat and unlike his own, “Yes. No man could ever a made it over th’ creek anyhow.”
    She knew he was wrong about the creek, and hated herself for this waste of time when now they seemed so troubled by the time that had gone. Her thoughts churned in a panic of thinking that she might have lost her way and would maybe be too late. She looked again and smiled to herself for it was still there, high and wreathed in a white fire of moonlit fog. She heard the child crying in another room and Rufe's calling of her name, and there was pity in his call, something more than pity—like terror almost. She saw tears falling on the cupped leaflike hand, and then Rufe's head bent over the buttons on the nightgown. Maybe he had taken her buttons and put them on the nightgown and now was sorry and ashamed. She wanted to tell him that he could have the buttons; there were so many things out there in the night for her to love. It was all so good—she remembered the need for haste and knew that she must wait until another time. Rufe called again, and as she rode away she wondered at the pity in his call.

S YLVIA T RENT A UXIER
    (December 28, 1900–December 4, 1967)

    Sylvia Trent Auxier was the eldest of sixteen children born to Dollie Blaine May Trent and T.J. Trent. She grew up in Pike County, Kentucky, attending a one-room log school. She went on to Pikeville College Academy, where she graduated at the head of her class.
    She was a teacher for two years before earning an R.N. degree at the University of Cincinnati Nursing School. She began her career as a public health nurse in eastern Kentucky, traveling by horseback to patients in Pike, Knott, Perry, and Leslie counties.
    In 1928, she married Jean Auxier, a lawyer, and they lived in a rustic log and stone house in Meta, Kentucky. The couple had one son.
    Her family has claimed that “the first sentence she spoke was in iambic pentameter and the second rhymed with it.” Long before her first book was published, her poems appeared in a number of publications, including the Saturday Evening Post, Christian Science Monitor , and Progressive Farmer. Auxier's first collection of poetry, published in 1948, was followed by five additional volumes, with the final one published posthumously by Pikeville College Press. She died near Pikeville in an automobile accident.
    On the book jacket of With Thorn and Stone , Pulitzer Prize—winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks praised her work: “The poetry of Sylvia Auxier is sane as well as beautiful. In it are to be found balance, a tenderized exaltation, and a comprehensive clarity.”
    Auxier paid attention to the women in her life and to everyday activities—and she paid tribute to them in her poetry.
O THER S OURCES TO E XPLORE
P RIMARY
    Poetry: With Thorn and Stone: New and Selected Poems (1968), Green of a Hundred Springs (1966), No Stranger to the Earth (1957), The Grace of the Bough (1957), Love-Vine (1953), Meadow-Rue (1948).
S ECONDARY
    Dorothy Edwards Townsend, Kentucky in American Letters , Vol. 3 (1976), 21–24. William S. Ward, A Literary History of Kentucky (1988), 344–45.

N EIGHBORS
    from With Thorn and Stone: New and Selected Poems (1968)
    They saw her walk a quiet way
Of household tasks from day to day;
    They saw her tend her flower plots
Bordered with blue forget-me-nots;
    And thought that all her footsteps went
On paths of peace and deep content.
    They did not know that in her heart
Were lands no human hand could chart,
    An alien land; rebellion-fed,
Where wild plum blossoms rioted.

W HEN G RANDMOTHER W EPT
    from With Thorn and Stone: New and Selected Poems
    When my grandmother wept she did not weep
Head on her folded arms, but all the while
She'd go about her work, and tears would creep
Slowly as though an inch a hard-won mile.
    Their passing made no inroads on her face:
Her cheeks were smooth, the lips firm to her will;
And inked in