THE GLASS CUTTER

The meetinghouse was no place for art.

Plain walls and clear glass

were better to focus the mind

on the spirit born in simplicity,

brought forth from the Inner Light,

and spoken in the still, small voice

that need not announce itself

with ornamentation.

So, too, with daily life.

When he became a man

he was told:  pursue a trade,

go into business, take up farming.

Do good, practical work.

The Meeting taught him

that God’s beauty was in all things.

He saw it everywhere—

in blades of grass bent before the wind,

in the colors of the sky throughout the day,

in ripples on the surface of a pond.

All the world was art to him.

So he became a glass cutter,

beveling simplicity's stark edge,

etching grace as lines and patterns

into vases, bowls, and glasses,

each refracting spirit and light.

Two More Poems in The Copperfield Review

The Copperfield Review is turning out to be a great place for me.  I've got two poems in the latest issue, Spring 2012:  "David Sang in Welsh Today" and "Separated in Death, Even as in Life."  Just about all of the historical poems in my Skimino Cycle have been published there. 

Check out the poems as well as the Copperfield Review's new look at http://copperfieldreview.com/?p=527

Three more poems at The Copperfield Review

I seem to have found a home in The Copperfield Review.  Three more of my Skimino Cycle poems have been published in the Winter 2012 issue:  "They Rode on Borrowed Horses," "John's Lament," and "She Will Not Thirst Again."  These poems fit temporally with the three poems published in the Summer 2011 issue as all focus on John and Mary Ratcliffe.  The three poems published in the Fall 2011 issue represented a step back in time, as they were set in the 1700s and early 1800s.

Many, many thanks to the editors at The Copperfield Review.  If you want read my poems there, see http://www.copperfieldreview.com/poetry/Ratcliffe%202012.htm

DAVID SANG IN WELSH TODAY

[Published in The Copperfield Review, Spring 2012]


DAVID SANG IN WELSH TODAY

Phebe Williams, 1856, as she and her husband, David, and a small group of fellow Mormons travel eastward from Utah to Kansas.  They had already crossed the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains the year before, as part of a group of Welsh Mormons migrating to Utah.

David sang in Welsh today—
faced the rising sun and sang;
his voice, so strong and clear,
we stopped our work and listened,
the women by the breakfast fires,
the men hitching up the mules,
even the soldiers escorting us—
all stopped and listened to him sing:
Arglwydd, arwain trwy’r anialwch—
Lord, lead me through the wilderness—
O, his voice, like a sweet fountain flowing,
clear and strong across the prairie.
David sang in Welsh today—
how good to hear him sing again.

He never sang in Utah—

not with the other men
while working in the quarry.
He would not join the chapel choir,
saying he could not sing
while the Saints were in darkness;
would not sing as long as humble Saints
were forced to give their possessions to the Church;
to work first for the leaders,
and then for themselves.
This was not the Zion we expected—
the communal life he preached in Wales.
He would not sing while the Church
preached polygamy,
or all the temple rites,
or blind obedience to the priesthood.
He would not sing while rule in Zion
was no better than the ironmasters’
grips on the valleys of South Wales.

And when we left Utah
traveling east through the mountains,
he still would not sing—
No sounds that might help
the Destroying Angels find us;
no praises sung to heaven above;
no songs to ease the hiraeth we felt—
the longing for life back in Wales.

David sang in Welsh today,
faced the rising sun and sang.
We stopped our work and listened,
and then a rising chorus,
the men hitching up the mules,
the women tending the fires,
voices rising in harmony—
pilgrims of poor appearance,
singing in this barren land.
We felt our anxious fears subside,
and the spirit of God and hope flowed through us,
like the River Jordan in the desert.

David canodd yn Gymraeg heddiw.
David sang in Welsh today.

Three More Poems in the Copperfield Review!

The Copperfield Review has published three more of my poems:  Cypress Boards, Skimino, and There Is No Life For Us Here (formerly John and Harriett, 1837).  That's six poems now in The Copperfield Review.

See:  http://www.copperfieldreview.com/poetry/Michael%20Ratcliffe%202.htm

Three poems in the Copperfield Review

Three of my poems from the Skimino Cycle were just published in The Copperfield Review, Summer 2011 issue:  "The Mountains Were My Meetinghouse," "The Glass," and "The Wheat Field."  All three are in the voice of Mary Townsend Ratcliffe, my great-great grandmother.  These are the first of my "Skimino Cycle" poems to be published.

THEY RODE ON BORROWED HORSES

[Published in The Copperfield Review, Winter 2012]


THEY RODE ON BORROWED HORSES

John Ratcliffe, Marshall County, Kansas, 1876, after his wife, Mary, has left him.


Sunlight glints across the sharded floor…
blue light, and he knows
it was the glass he gave her.

He reflects upon another day…

They rode on borrowed horses,
leaving Wheeling at the first blue light of dawn
while others still slept.
Into the ancient hills they rode
to West Alexander
and a chapel where they would wed.
Just the two of them,
no family, no friends,
no queries from the Meeting,
no concerns over their beliefs,
or perhaps lack thereof.
Just the two of them,
and the preacher and wife to make it legal.

Side by side they rode
under that November sky
clear and blue as her eyes;
blue as her gingham dress
and the ribbon (a gift from his mother)
holding back her dark hair.
Through familiar meadows
where they walked,
gathering plants for her collection,
and minerals to color glass,
the cobalt that he used
for the two glasses in his bag.

He remembered the day they met—
the things they talked of:
plants and rocks, sand and glass,
the designs of nature,
the creation of beauty in the artist’s hands.
He thought of walks in the mountains,
sharing their dreams—
she, to be a surgeon and scientist;
he, an artist, shaping glass and stone—
dreams left far behind in Wheeling.

Sunlight glints across the sharded floor,
he takes the other glass from the shelf
and remembers the end of that other day—


Down the ancient mountains,
their new life beginning,
they rode on borrowed horses
under blue November skies.
In a familiar meadow,
at a spring, clear water flowing
they stopped. In his saddlebag
two blue glasses,
blown and cut by hand;
together they filled them from the spring,
and drank to the dreams they would share.

THERE IS NO LIFE FOR US HERE

[Published in The Copperfield Review, Fall 2011]


THERE IS NO LIFE FOR US HERE

The combination of farming without slave labor in a slave-dependent economy on land whose soil had become exhausted, along with a general economic depression led to mounting debt for John and Harriet Ratcliffe. In 1837, they lost the family farm in Skimino and sold off most of their personal possessions. They moved to Ohio, where they joined John’s father, siblings, and other relatives who had been part of the larger migration of Quakers from southeastern Virginia.


There is no life for us here
On this bitter ground grown cold.
We must leave this land, my dear.

Our debt’s grown too high, I fear.
The deed now in Barlow’s hold—
There is no life for us here.

The cows, the calves, John’s prize steer,
Farm tools, implements, all sold.
We must leave this land, my dear.

The earthen and chinaware
You thought you’d keep until old,
There is no life for us here,

Bedsteads, sideboard, all twelve chairs
Have been granted, bargained, sold.
We must leave this land, my dear.

O’er Virginia shed no tears
Our new life Ohio holds.
There is no life for us here,
We must leave this land, my dear.

CYPRESS BOARDS

[Published in The Copperfield Review, Fall 2011]

CYPRESS BOARDS

In 1805, John Ratcliff, a Virginia Quaker, delivered 340 cypress boards to pay his deceased brother’s $6.00 fine for repeatedly refusing to appear for militia training.


Brother, I cut these boards for thee—
from the cypress trees thee planned to fell,
easily cut and worked by hand,
but strong and sturdy;
fine planks to side a house
or panel the room thee planned to add.

William, I cut these boards for thee—
memories of thee scribed in every board,
thy face in the swirls of grain,
thy hands in the rough edges,
as I grip each board and stack
for sale in Williamsburg.

Dear Will, I cut these boards for thee—
each board a fresh reminder
that thou art no longer here
to share these warm Spring days,
to walk the newly planted fields,
to break the silence of Meeting to share thy thoughts.

O Will, I cut these boards for thee—
three hundred and forty; every one
to pay the fine levied
for thy refusal to appear
on the militia field
and train in the ways of waging war.

O Will, I cut these boards for thee—
with each one my heart rips more
and the Inner Light is repelled
as the sour bile of anger rises,
as the saw blade rips through each log,
and the sapwood bleeds my pain.

Dearest Will, these boards were cut for thee—
at end of day, each cypress board,
straight and stacked with loving care,
and in repeated motions—lift and stack—
that of God refreshed in me
by these boards I cut for thee.

SKIMINO

[Published in The Copperfield Review, Fall 2011]

SKIMINO


I see him standing in his field, rough hands wrapped
round the handle of his hoe, watching the army march
down the Williamsburg Road. He hears the fifers’ reel;
the Continentals’ drums beat a cadence foreign
to the rhythms of his Quaker life.
His thoughts turn quickly to the farm—
corn stacked in the crib, tobacco hanging in the barn to cure,
sons and cattle in the safety of the woods.

On First Day he sits in the meetinghouse’s silence
listening to the cannons’ siege across the fields in Yorktown.
And, when the guns quiet, a world turned upside down.
In Williamsburg, eloquent speech on liberty gained,
freedom and the rights of men,
but there in Skimino plain speech and prayers
for freedoms that will not soon come.
In the meetinghouse clapboard and plain
he holds all in the light of peace,
and embraces a path at odds with the new America.

In Skimino I stand among the regrowth and the briars,
the southern pines and the shadowed light.
The meetinghouse is gone; the graves of Friends forgotten,
nameless underneath the road to Williamsburg, Yorktown,
and the fleet at Hampton Roads.
In this world tumbled down men still speak
of waging war and liberty
in the name of peace that will not soon come.
But here in Skimino,in the solace of the shadowed light,
so many years after him,
I embrace his path of peace.