LOCAL WRITER WINS AWARD

Winnsboro poet, Angela Wylie, who is a favorite at the Cowboy Poetry readings at Tinney Chapel UMC in Winnsboro, has won another award for one of her poems. This award is from North East Texas Community College and carries a prize of $100.00. Plus, Angela was invited to read her poem at a reception held at the college.

She's pictured here just prior to the reception.

Angela was very excited about winning the award for this very special poem that came to her as one of those gifts writers get sometimes. She was on her way to Sulphur Springs with her son, Kevin, and they passed an old house. "This place was all grown over," she said. "And Kevin made the comment that most people don't know that when you see wild jonquils and sycamore trees that there was once a house there. The words for this poem just started coming and I reached down on the floorboard and picked up a piece of trash and just started writing. I later tweaked the poem, but it was there."

When she heard about the contest at NETCC and found out the poems had to be regional and could be of any style, she decided to enter. "Since it depicts East Texas, it fit," she said.

Angela was kind enough to share her poem with readers here. Thank you, Angela.

All That Remains Are the Flowers

Old homesteads dot the by-ways
And clearings along the East Texas country roads.
Silent sycamores stand guard over jonquils
And tangled hawthorn,
Different from the encroaching woodland.
Not native, are these plants which bloom
In the warming earth.
Released from winter’s cold sleep,
They rise again, withstanding the storms,
Emerging to grow and bloom as they return
To sun-dappled shadows beneath the spreading trees.
Once they were brought from another place and time
To give shade and beauty to where a house once stood.
The house, built with care and expectation of life,
Like the flowers, have watched dreams and lives
Blend into yesterday.
Here in the shade of the past,
Wisteria climbs high, feral and loosed into the woods,
As wild and errant as the dreams and lives
That have merged into time.

A shy, trembling young man
Plucked a blossom for his sweetheart,
His heart racing as she lifted her smiling eyes and
Fragrance surrounds a first gentle kiss.

Chubby, small, soft child-hands plucked flowers
To give to Mamma as she hangs out the wash.
With a sweet smile, her slender fingers delicately
Placed green stems into a wellwater filled fruit jar.
Flowers grace the center of the worn table,
The soft scent of daffodils blend with
Fried pork with mustard greens,
And cornbread cooked in an iron skillet,
Sustaining hard-working people who till the land.
The land that cradles the past and nurtures the future.

A woman wearing the worn wrinkles of life
Beneath soft, snowy hair
Sits on her porch in her rocking chair.
The rhythmic creak of the slow rocking
 Matches the rhythm of her world as
She gazes out upon the blossoms about her
And remembers.
Soft memories, sweet and yet sad.
Time had gone by and she knows not how.
Now
She watches her small grandchild pluck a blossom
The stem broken short beneath the petals,
Held and offered with a dirt- stained hand.
The woman accepts the flower
With a sweet smile
Content
Surrounded by her flowers and the love of her family
And the gift of the grandchild
 Who will carry a part of her
 Forward into the awakening spring of the future.

Once people worked, loved, lived, and died.
Built, created, and planted in the soil.
Yet, now grass and weeds cover their labor
Their houses and barns are recycled into the earth.
Reclaimed and erased from the landscape.
The earth has vanquished the toils of mankind,
Who thought themselves valiant and strong.
Forcers, controllers, and movers of mountains
They once thought themselves to be.
Gone now are their earnest endeavors
Gone to shadows in the silence of the sleepy glade.

Yet the flowers remain.
Deep-rooted now in the loamy lost yard,
Planted by some gentle woman to beautify her world.
Brought from her mother’s garden
A bit of her childhood planted with care.
A bit of the past brought with her into her new life.
Precious gift from generations of mothers to daughters
They remain now,
The flowers.
Established and unrestrained, returning each spring
Yellow and white they bloom among the weeds,
Scenting the silent air with soft whispers of a world now gone.
As soft as a whispered dream they remain
Fragrant in the dappled shadows of Spring.
Testimony of a long lost time.
And now all that remain are the flowers.

Angela Wylie
March 2009