A Ballad for Singers of Ballads
with thanks to the Lomax family, many anonymous artists, and those still singing
In the land of the hermit thrush,
where none but mountains range.
In the land of the hermit man,
a land where time is strange—
The stories wear their leather boots,
and traipse from vale to hills.
And with them songs likes larks will rise,
and spout about like rills.
Some inch about in ink of night,
and gather chills for spines.
They brush the dust from off the graves,
and tumble bones for signs.
While others stalk about in day,
to rope and lasso word,
to punch the lost doughies of tune
and gather all that’s heard.
Where cowboy knights and prisoned queens
all offer up their songs.
Where Nellie Gray comes back at last,
but Lead Belly still longs.
Where Jesses James and Casey Jones
keep pace with Silver Jack.
Time’s coat wears thin, but wraps you in
and ever draws you back—
To fires in fields, and hearts, and hearths
That burn since time began,
and voice must rise up to the skies,
in these most longing lands.
For the Lonesome Road Home
To look within your eyes it must have been
A long and lonesome bone dry dirt road home.
That it is the kind of red akin to sin,
With dust and grit to follow where you roam.
It lines your face with stories writ in blood.
Of nights you gnawed your fist for lack of love,
For lack of love and beans and then the flood
That came and washed with mud like hand and glove,
And after that one damp there came the heat,
A baking bronze without a place to hide—
No rest for dead men standing on their feet;
No rest for living anywhere besides—
The hell you made it after all these years.
The pain’s long gone; the eyes too dry for tears.
Olivia Lee Stogner is a writer and English professor. She is committed to social justice work, supporting Fair Trade companies, and her racial equity community group. She loves traveling, books, art, listening to music, the woods around her home, and spending time with her sister and their dogs.