Piece of Cake

by Kathryn Stripling Byer

(written for Poet Laureate installation, 2005, at the state capitol)

When the young woman calling from
Charlotte to interview me for her radio program
asked, “What is a Laureate, anyway?”

I heard my voice hem and haw
like a bad line of poetry. I thought I heard all of the Old
North State holding its breath while I struggled

to say something clever, but all I could think of
was “lariat.” Then in a moment
of quiet desperation, I thought of Laurette,

who lives just down the road
from my childhood home, hands busy sculpting
the icing on each of her Milky Way cakes

as she stands in the heart of her kitchen,
the sun sliding into the cornfields, another June
day disapearing, another night kindling

its Milky Way stars,
and at long last I know how to answer
that question. A Laureate

lassoes the Milky Way,
word after luminous word of it,
holding it out in her hands

like a piece
of Laurette’s chocolate cake
saying,

Try this!
Believe me,
You’ll like the way poetry tastes!

(Kay Byer.  ps: Nice tights!)

Last week, I had the pleasure of being invited to speak at a conference at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina called “Okra to Opera: The Conference on Southern Culture.”  The conference started in the early 1960′s, when Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty were featured as speakers.  I knew that I had been asked to participate on a panel discussion on the shifting landscape of Southern foodways, but what I didn’t know is that I would get to meet, and be inspired by, an abundance of gifted Southern women; professors and artists and writers and farmers and musicians.

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