Susan Renee Layne

Irvine, Kentucky, USA

Transplanted from Maryland to Kentucky Holler with 3 creeks in 1978. Live in log house with my love, Christian Lund; No electric for environment; work at home or poetry and gardening; Canning vegetables, growing shrubs, roses and flowers provide constant joy to us and the hundreds of wild birds who come to our many bench feeders. Numerous poems published by ISP International; Poet of Merit Award; Six Editors Choice Awards. I am a mystical person who likes to dwell in the all perfect metaphysical Universe. Poetry reaches into deeper thought, it penetrates where language fails to give meaning.

The Holler's Woods

Monstrous Beech trees
Spread out in the forest,
As if planted by some un-seen hand
Most all with holes in them
Sometimes stacked -
Looking like so many high rises,
Without elevators -
They're doorway's for the Bard Owls
So many times I have been here,
It's just below the cliffs
Few times have I glimpsed it's inhabitants
Drawn back time and again,
To these sacred woods
There's hardly no way,
To describe the beauty I've found.
It's peace in my heart
Harmony for my soul in Eastern Kentucky

Gerald's Promise (A True Experience)

A long time ago in the year of 1991
My love took sick, I knew not what of
Four dream's of future showed me he'd leave,
And drop behind Death's veil and I, be left alone
So we made a pact, he promised to come back
13 is my unlucky number, I feared it more and more
And on August 13th--Death knocked on our door
You must realize I was devastated
To know before what was to be, and be unable to change it
Then came a night, it stands in my memory
Heavy quilted curtains we made hung at the windows,
Alone in bed I leapt to see, two shining stars,
Bright as Venus in evening's sky looking over me-inside!
As suddenly they had appeared, they brightened and were gone
I straight away grabbed a light and ran down the stairs
I sat right down and spoke aloud, 'Gerald, I know you're here'
You scoff and ask how am I sure it was he, Dear Reader
I'll tell you how I know, this was January 3, 1992
It was on the date of the Anniversary of our meeting,
Six year's prior, right down to the Hour!

Growing

Nirvana comes at the end of the row
Hanging onto the top of your hoe
Breathing hard from every pore,
Blood coursing, you never felt so alive.
You see the garden in your minds eye
Before it begins to grow