Richard Allen Taylor
Richard Allen Taylor is the author of several poetry collections including Letters to Karen Carpenter and Other Poems (2023) from Main Street Rag Publishing Company. His poems, articles and reviews have appeared in Rattle, Comstock Review, The Pedestal, Litmosphere, Gyroscope Review and South Carolina Review, among others. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Taylor formerly served as review editor for The Main Street Rag and co-editor of Kakalak, is a past president of Charlotte Writers Club and former director of adult poetry contests for North Carolina Poetry Society. After retiring from his business career, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. In 2016, Taylor and his co-editors at Kakalak received the Irene Blair Honeycutt Legacy Award for service to the writing community. He currently resides in the Greenville, SC area.
Blessed Are
After “Ode on Inheritance” by Kate Partridge
Perhaps there is no inheritance worth having
that does not include a narrative of water—
a river, a lake, an ocean
pounding on the beach below the open windows.
My father bought a farm
with a white house on a hill, a pond
at the bottom. My mother inherited. She later sold.
All of it was (shall we say) liquidated.
Gone, the tiny lake
fed by a stream tumbling over my father’s modest
ambitions. Just as well. My brothers and I sought
neither the view nor the serenity.
We were reaching elsewhere, for something
less pastoral, more hopeful,
something more highway
than country road. But even a cave can elicit hope.
The torch goes out, we keep thrusting our hands
forward, groping the walls,
feet following our blindness. As if a hole could lean
against its sides. All it takes is the will
to swap adjectives.
Trade wet for slick. Choose briny over soaked.
Here we go again with that
narrative of water. Snow, hail,
ice melting in your palm. Later, when the drought
squeezes the pond dry, the spark catches
and fire climbs the hill,
everything promised burns. The difference between
bold and meek becomes a matter of timing.
Bold when we rush forward
to extinguish the blaze. Meek when the flames
force us back to a place
where faces do not melt.
When rain comes, finally, we inherit the memory
of blackened hills, even if no lawyers or signatures
attend. When grief follows, we console ourselves.
We say the trees bury their seeds under layers of ash.
We say the trees dream of resurrection.
