and time slides like silk
against silk.
Easy to get lost
in letting go
this time of year.
Lost letters.
Lost memories
Lost copper
earrings a friend
gave me.
Split Silk,
I haven’t forgotten
the name
of that church
on the far side
of home ,
how it rose
from the roadside,
a hymn to the landscape
I passed through
where pumpkins
lay stacked beside fields
like the kindling
my ancestors gathered
for bonfires
on All hallows Eve
when the veil
between seen
and unseen trembles
sheer as silk
through which
we might, if
we come close
enough, see
the other side
waiting for us
as a mirror waits
to be filled
with the bright
face of forever.
Halloween Again
KATHRYN STRIPLING BYER’s poetry, prose, and fiction have appeared widely, including Hudson Review, Poetry, The Atlantic, Georgia Review, Shenandoah, and Southern Poetry Review. Often anthologized, her work has also been featured online, where she maintains the blogs “Here, Where I Am,” and “The Mountain Woman.” Her first book of poetry, The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest, was published in the AWP Award Series in 1986, followed by the Lamont (now Laughlin) prize-winning Wildwood Flower, from LSU Press. Her subsequent collections have been published in the LSU Press Poetry Series. She served for five years as North Carolina’s first woman poet laureate.