POEMS
Norm Venable
Ode to a Kentucky Woman
You want you mountains
to remain mountains
Your family to stay
family
You wait for years for
someone who has left to return
You want what you can
not have
And have what you do not
want
So you wait for one who
will not come
You want to eat your
cake and the ice cream too
You want your best
friend to become your boyfriend
You listen to Playboy
blondes speak of ecstasy
All the while the years
start to pass you by
You want a drink and a
pill too
Knowing the harm that
both will do
As you wait for what
will never come
A giant bulldozer plows
into a mountain
You once were young and
younger
But grey appeared and
lines grew over eyes
You were once carded by
the cashier
And wanted by both young
boys and old men
Then the Earth rounded
the Sun again
The Moon rose and ocean
waves splashed
Comets came to visit and
then went away
And we both grew old and
older still
And all our lovers never
came back home
So we wait
As our mountains fall
down around us
And those we love
disappear
Like our creeks, hills and hollows.
Onward Kentucky
Come on Kentucky, pick
yourself up, carry on
Rise from beaten down
lands and move on
You’ve been rained
on—ice stormed on
From Harlan County to
Louisville
Left in the dark with
no lights on
For two weeks running
all alone
You’ve been
Gardner-Webbed—ten losses a Season
And Twenty-Twentyed by
God what was the reason
By someone who told the
whole wide world
She was one of
Kentukcy’s Own
So shake it off and move
on
You still have some of
your landscape
And a little bit left of
your coal
You do have all of your
Bluegrass
And some part of your
basketball
Though the man comers to
take your minerals
And in doing so lays
your mountains down
He takes away all the
funds from you
Then spends them in a
faraway town
As a pill doctor from
down in Nashville
Tries to spin wasted and
weary heads around
Remember heroes Thomas
Walker and Daniel Boone
They are both your past
and what you will become
Soon
So rise back up to the
top Kentucky
You are the heart of the
Appalachian land
When someone tells you
“You can’t,”
I’m here to tell you,
“You can!”
So Onward, Kentucky,
Onward!