Kathryn Stripling Byer

(November 25, 1944 – June 5, 2017)

Poet Laureate of North Carolina, 2005-2009

Kathryn Stripling Byer published six books of poetry. The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest was her debut poetry collection, published by Texas Tech University Press in 1986 as part of the Associated Writing Programs Award Series, selected by John Frederick Nims. Since then, her collections have all been published in the LSU Press Poetry Series. Wildwood Flower, her second collection, was named the Laughlin Selection from Academy of American Poets, followed by Black Shawl, chosen by Billy Collins for the Brockman-Campbell Award, given by the North Carolina Poetry Society. Catching Light received the 2002 Poetry Book Award from the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, and Coming To Rest earned the Hanes Award in Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 2007. Her most recent volume, Descent, appeared in 2012, also in the LSU Press Poetry Series. Her poetry, essays and fiction have appeared in journals and newspapers ranging from The Atlantic to Appalachian Heritage. She served as North Carolina's first woman Poet Laureate from 2005 through 2009. She lives in Cullowhee, North Carolina, surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Daily Witness

1

Morning

The pine bough framed as usual
by my kitchen window sags with snow.
As I drink coffee in this house that hugs the hill
against the wind, what we have brought
together under one roof rights itself around me. 

If I tried to fool myself,
I’d say a place for everything
and everything in place—the soup cans in my pantry,
Rembrandt’s windmill framed above your easy chair,
my own face framed by pots of philodendron
while I look for spider webs that spring like weeds 

across the walls. But even as I scrape the dishes
clean of one more breakfast’s scraps,
the clouds beyond me crumble into afternoon.
Just yesterday I watched the last leaves claw back
at the cold before they snapped their stems
like all the rest. They say it’s woman’s work 

to keep back what she knows, the boredom
of these mornings that are swept on soon enough.
They say it has its own rewards.
But listen. Such a stillness
in the corners of my house!
Sometimes I want to lie down in it,
sleep as we did last night while the snow fell
on our roof, deliberately as dust.

2

Afternoon

I pull yarn looped
around my needle
through a stitch and move
on to another. Single
crochet’s what they call
it and for larger stitches
there are more loops
you must gather and
control. You’ve double,
treble, double treble
crochet as the stitches
hook into a sweater
or a shawl or what’s more
common, rippled afghans
if you’re patient.
Making something out of
almost nothing, some
new pattern from
a ball of yarn takes
hours. Days. Takes dawn
till dark. My mother
did it, and her
mother and her mother’s
mother fashioned doilies
out of thin white thread
while I looked on. She
said such fingerwork
calmed women’s nerves by
making them take pains
to pass the time. It’s true
the chains link up
so quickly you may hardly
notice when it’s time
to turn. All afternoon
I pull yarn looped
around my needle through
these countless stitches
cradled in my arms.

3

Evening

If these leaves between

the light and where we lie
together almost sleeping, burning
themselves out the same, 

the same as always
though I stroke your thigh
that lies against my own 

until its dark hair warms
my palm like pinestraw kindling, if
this should be too much 

on my mind, the fading
not the fire, for me to dare
ask what will happen

to us, please forgive me.
But don’t look at me like that,
as if your eyes can’t help

but hold an hourglass of light
in each, and light already six o’clock
and sinking. Makes me tired 

enough to turn away from you
sometimes, from love
itself that makes me want

the two of us alive forever.