Raymond Neely

Regional poet Raymond Neely was born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia and has always resided in or near to Pipestem.  He was educated at Concord College of Athens, West Virginia where he earned a Bachelor of the Arts degree in English composition.  His poetry represents the present day poetic mind of thriving Appalachia, scenic Pipestem, and the surrounding areas.

Bouquets

Of wine,

of weddings,

breathe their deep aromas.

Of summer walks down old dirt roads,

of wildflowers,

of roses,

the unfolding trick of a magician's hand,

for dates,

for wives,

of shops,

and homemade,

bouquets.

Of Beauty

     There is a single vision of bright light which I had as a child.  It is of a girl or woman out on the porch of a white house swinging from one hand around the pillar, swooning slowly from side to side, leaning out over the edge.  I was riding in a car and it was summertime.  She wore a yellow sundress.  It was all of beauty.

      I peer closer as I remember and she becomes clearer until I can nearly see her face with bright evening sunlight yellowing the air.  I remember that my first feeling of love was about her and her beauty, first love about a girl or woman.  Now I see the angel threads of her lemon colored hair for an instant and she's swinging around the pillar.

     I know that it was your from pictures of you when you were younger which you showed me.  She was you all along.  The vision continues, nowadays, and it's still there on the porch of an old white house in Pipestem  and you are kissing daisies, showered with petals and dust and pollen and the light of the sun like free vitamins.

Blossoms

The whitest apple blossoms
dapple the foilage of their tree,
lay and hang in the wind amid the leaves,
carouselling with the bumblebees,
the sweet seeping odor of ripe apples,
and the whitest apple blossoms.
Floating our of the mountains hanging
beneath the twirling umbrella of an
apple blossom;
shake a limb and they are like confetti.
They copter downward,
some see-sawing lazily,
falling apple blossoms,
others lolling in the air as they fall,
blossoms.