"Coming Home to the Valley"

The community poem at Art on Cullers Run is a tradition. This is our fifth year, a milestone. 

I am the weaver, not the author, threading individual bits of writing into a whole. What one person writes offers a different meaning when it's joined to someone else's phrase. And seemingly random thoughts/images end up perfectly suited to the final piece. 

Here's our 2024 arts festival community poem:

Coming Home to the Valley

 

Nomads wandering country roads. 

Floating seeds ride summer breezes. 

Buzz of insects… lilt of laughter. The art

of connections. The “hi” way up gravel 

 

roads to poets and porches, panting pups 

lapping water, shadows on sweltering grass. 

Warm air lazily lazing. I’m a poet but 

have control issues, moving incrementally 

 

as the sun moves across the sky. Bee 

breath in heavy air. Dancing with creativity… 

getting lost in shadows of moon, fireflies 

glowing the quietness. Their silent song. 

 

Blood-red barns born from slices of sunrise, 

band sanders and belt saws, sweat. 

Holes in the sky between clouds steal 

some art. And the woodpecker came home 

 

with us. I refresh with the balm of beauty,

admiring art in the shade. Reminding 

me how I love boxes… filling the void. 

Say what you will, I did my best. 

 

Burgeoning clouds take me home. 

Lightness of a breeze, a kind soul, relief. 

Time exiled to savor the moment. Art brings 

the world together. Again and again.

 

~voices of visitors to the poetry tent, Art on Cullers Run 2024

(assembled by poet-in-residence Charise M. Hoge)

Thank you to all the contributors!