Finn Bille: Guest Poet

with a special announcement at the end.

Preening Great Blue Heron photographed by Ray Zimmerman at the Curtain Pole Road Wetland in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Welcome Finn:

I am establishing a pattern of featuring guest authors in this publication. Today, I am pleased to present four poems by Finn Bille, recently published in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers. If you missed my story about his success, it was titled “Celebrating a Fellow Poet.” Finn Bille’s poems published in this edition reflect an influence of his adopted home in Chattanooga.

His four poetry collections include The King’s Coin (Maecenas, 2020), which Julie Allen, editor of The Bridge, calls “. . .a sensually and emotionally rich contribution to the literature of hyphenated identity that should resonate with readers far beyond the borders of both the remembered Denmark and America he so skillfully evokes.”

Finn lives in Chattanooga, TN, with Jeanne, his wife of sixty years.

My Ashes

Fling me like a sower casting seed,
toss my ashes in the woods
upon deep layers of old leaves.

Let rain guide remnant particles of me
to soil, to feed unseen mycelia
that bloom next spring as chanterelles.

Protect these woods,
let no one own them
but let their stewards

gather mushrooms
and have their ashes flung
like sowers casting seed.

Ballast

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
 Are sweeter. . . ."
--John Keats

Like a ship in ballast
steadied by the weight 
of worthless cargo
I travel with my blues harp
resting in my back pack
Its music stowed away
unheard but dreamed 
playing to the beat of steel rail clicks,
of trees and poles that rush astern.

When I swing my pack around
to grope for coffee coins--
a euro, pound or crown--
I set it on a bench
at the central railroad station
or on a bollard at the ferry port.

My fingers brush the threads of shorts,
the metal spiral of my journal,
slick shell of raincoat,
and then the mouth harp's row 
of diatonic breathing holes
between the smooth steel sides.

As my fingers count each hole
and glide along the mouthpiece.
Unheard music seeps 
up through the pack,
lightens the load
with riffs of blues
as I slip through crowds,
arpeggios for my run
to catch the train. 

Now home, unpacked
the ballast harp offloaded,
I stow away this silent weight
that served me as melodious freight.


Farewell

My mother’s hand, not cold
but still and mottled gray, brown, pink:
spoiled meat on pristine sheet.

She scorned this home, refused its food
mumbled, babbled and hummed hymns
recalled from childhood faith.

My hand in hers, I felt her stir.
Was this tremor her farewell?
I could not tell; I could not weep.

My hand in hers grew cold.


Magpie and Mallard

Magpie raided Mallard’s nest,
cracked shell, pierced eggs, 
sucked yoke and white.
 
The farmer’s wife			
thrust up a sharpened pole
through sticks and thorns,
through mother magpie’s 
clutch of blue-green eggs.
Viscous bird life glazed the pole,
dropped yoke into the avenger’s eye,
blue as the mallard’s wing,
blue as the magpie’s blaze.

Thanks for reading. I will be contacting other Chattanooga area writers about participating in Crane’s Eye View as Guest Authors.

Walnut Street Publishing, producer of my latest book, It’s Just a Phase, has informed me that my short story, “New Landscape,” will appear in volume four of their anthology, The Walnut Branch. Copies will be available at the August 1 Launch. Presale information for copies by mail is available at walnutstreetpublishing.com. - Ray