Friday from the Archives: “Rain” the 2013 James Applewhite Poetry Prize poem
by Susan Laughter Meyers with art by Leah Sobsey in NCLR 2014
It is time for this year’s Applewhite Prize contest! We’re continuing our Poetry Month highlights with the 2013 Applewhite winner: “Rain” by Susan Laughter Meyers. Judge Fred Chappell remarked, “The language is modest, but charged with feeling; the sensibility is wonderfully generous. “Rain” is just a very fine
poem. And “just” is very hard to come by.” Among her many publications and awards, she also was a long-time writing instructor with an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte who taught poetry workshops and classes in area community programs. She served as president of the poetry societies of both North and South Carolina. Read remembrances on her passing by other NC poets in our NCLR Online 2018 issue.
Rain
by Susan Laughter Meyers
Come again another day.
Let today be that other day. Unleash.
May the saw palmettos clatter, the tea olive leaves
dip and tip their oily sheen. Torrent. Bead
and slicken my skin, drench me. Not for need
but for mercy. Downpour to gullywash
this rubbled knot away. May the unplanted garden
puddle and the ditch by the gravel road overrun.
Deluge. If not for mercy, to feed
the frilly azalea and the fig tree budding
and the cinnamon fern unfurling. Let me not forget
the woolly worm I saw last week in the driveway,
the dark anole sunning on the porch floor
yellowed by pollen. Whelm and sodden.
For my long-dead aunt, my namesake,
years away but near. Squall. Let me
smell what’s brewing. For my brother
in a hospital miles away but near. I could lose
someone. Sitting here on the steps, I watch
for hummingbirds and the first sign of a tanager.
Read online at ProQuest. Add the NCLR 2014 issue to your collection.
