Poetry by Gene Hyde

Gene Hyde's eastern North Carolina roots go back more than ten generations. He fell in love with the North Carolina mountains five decades ago and has lived in the Appalachians most of his adult life. In 2024 he retired after a career as an Appalachian archivist and academic librarian at Radford University and UNC Asheville. His poetry, photography, and writing have appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Amethyst Review, Salvation South, Appalachian Journal, San Antonio Review, Shelia-na-Gig Online, Third Wednesday, Raven's Perch, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Mountains Piled Upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene, and elsewhere. He lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina with his partner and a scruffy little dog.

Hearing Horace Silver on the Blacksburg Golf Course

I was trespassing on the golf course as darkness fell,
high on the hill, Asta smiling in her herding dog way,
a cold wind blowing from the North Fork valley below.
All was quiet save for the breeze in the spruces
when Horace Silver's "Song For My Father" rang in the air,

the bass line bouncing across the brittle winter grass.
Countless nights I’d walked here and never heard music.
Though muffled, it was from a nice hi-fi, the horns and piano
sounding good in the starlight. I smiled and listened,
then moved on, feeling like an audio voyeur
caught eavesdropping on the course.

Asta and I strolled there every night, but never again
heard music on the fairway. What kindred soul played this?
I considered trekking up the adjoining road during the day,
knocking door to door, asking "did you leave 'Song for My Father'
hanging in the golf course air?" But I was too shy
and the mystery jazz fan remained unknown.

Now, decades later, my mind drifts back to that cold night,
and I know what I'd say if I met this nocturnal DJ. I'd ask
him to turn the album over, follow it with Grant Green, or Miles,
or John Coltrane, because there's nothing like A Love Supreme
when the spirit moves and the wind blows cold,
like it did then, like it surely does now.
I'd close my eyes and pray along
with Coltrane's sonic hymn, embracing
it because we need all the love we can find
these days, sounding out unexpectedly
in unusual places, a sweet tsunami
of joy to drown the darkening haze.

Indolence

Perhaps just an oval,
unclipped, anchored
in its absence,
an idea born
from creative
indolence

maybe inspired by that guy
in front of the library
in, what?, ’78? ’79? sporting
a grey sweatshirt
emblazoned with
Indolent Young Southerner

suggesting a career path,
one fraught with possibilities
I could aspire to, but the act
of aspiration itself
kicked me out of the club,

which brings me back to the oval
left unmowed in the backyard,
a mess of untidiness, so I tossed
a handful of wildflower seeds
and let it be as indolence decrees:

behold! blossoms!
a beaming smile on my dog’s face
as she plows floral paths,
petals landing on her back,
reveling in a carefree carpet
of quiet blooming grace
just an unkempt oval
in this otherwise
tidy place

Mama Nellie's Language of Love

Mama Nellie wrestled her tiller through sandy
Carolina soil, a spry septegenarian willing

her Troy-Bilt into submission. Bounty burst forth,
okra semicolons awaiting the cast-iron skillet, an

abundant ellipsis of tomatoes and potatoes,
yellow squash commas punctuating the earth.

Her grammar was Depression-era thrift, saving
pieces of multicolored thread together on spools

in case she needed them for future harvest. Her
squash casserole came to our table when she died,

Mom finally revealing the magic: "Ritz crackers
were the secret ingredient: they make it taste

more cheesy.” Mama Nellie's vocabulary was
versed in bacon grease and garden, with a bit

of Ritz and cream of mushroom soup tossed in—
store-bought slang off the Piggly Wiggly shelf

to entice our young tastes. Her language was love,
delivered in the kitchen, countering her brusk tone

and her no-nonsense life. My cousins see her in my
Mom, silver hair and twinkle in the eye, each loving

in her own way: one a demanding farmer’s wife, the other
a savvy shopper, delighted if Ritz were on sale today.