About the book
The author describes a starry night at sea, bloody battles in Vietnam and
a near death experience, seeing the light of Eternity, and resurrection
in a battlefield morgue.
His visit to the grave of the Apache war chief
Geronimo, results in a meeting of their spirits at a ritual camp-fire,
where gifts are exchanged.
The book tells of lonely camp-fires, a haunted
river, poets and musicians, and legends.
It contains poems inspired by or written about
the author by others poets, a collection of Hai Ku and several short essays
and stories of a lawman, outlaws, dancing fairies, and other subjects.
In the section of romantic poems, the author
describes his beloved wife Johanna as the one word love poem of his life.
Sample poems:
| HEARTBEAT
When I looked to see what tracks
I had left in the sands of time
I found not footprints
but words in lines.
Some are love poems
gentle flowings in three-quarter time
others drip the blood of war,
written hard – in broken rhythm
and ragged line.
Some in unrefined prose
others in simple rhyme –
and though none are epic or classic
they are as I lived them,
all of them mine.
Perhaps they should not lie
exposed upon a page
but should have remained
the coursing of blood
in poetic veins.
For they are from whence they came,
merely the beating of my heart. |
DISTRACTIONS
Here at the Barnes and Noble coffee shop café
the lights, the blare of the mike,
the distracting whirr of the coffee grinder,
the undertone of conversation of other poets waiting to read;
rob you – make you half-blind and half-deaf
to what I say here, and cause my words to fall short –
half way to your mind and heart
Come away with me – into the night –
to some secluded bend of the river
where the fragrant air sighs
with the scent of honeysuckle on its soft breath
and the only sound is of a faint cricket
serenading the river’s murmuring sleep
and a scattered sprinkle of stars light the scene.
And so – with only this sweet distraction of eye and ear – now hear!
And let the resonant passion of my voice take you spinning back
to times and places of which you may never have known –
the poems – flung into the enchanted darkness – like falling stars.
And as the last lines of the last poem fade away – fade away –
may they have touched your soul –
like the “Amen” – to a softly whispered prayer. |
About the Author
Charles F. Weyant, AKA “The Hawk” was born July 12, 1937, in a one hundred-forty
year old ancestral farmhouse in the foothills of the Alleghenies near Weyant,
Bedford County, Pennsylvania, the middle child of two older sisters and
two younger brothers.
When he was four years old, the family
relocated first to Doyline and later to Shreveport, Louisiana, where his
father deserted the family when Charles was nine. At the young age
of sixteen, Charles joined the Army and served twenty years.
Severely wounded on his third tour to
Vietnam as a combat infantryman, he was medically discharged at Fort Bragg,
North Carolina in 1974. He was a Civil Service employee at Fort Bragg for
sixteen years and was given medical retirement in 1991.
A resident of Fayetteville, North Carolina,
he has been a board member of Writers’ Ink Guild for over twenty years,
having served as President, Vice President, editor of anthologies, and
is a juror in the long standing poetry contest Fields of Earth.
His valued support of the National
Hollerin’ Contest led to his being officially made an honorary citizen
of Spivey’s Corner, North Carolina.
Publication of his writings has been
limited to a few short stories and poems in local newspapers and several
anthologies, including Award Winning Poems of 1990 published by
the North Carolina Poetry Society. He also read on A Time To Listen,
a public radio program on WFSS for ten years.
He wrote the critique of My Childhood’s
Eden and the introduction to Autobiography of an Oak by Raymond
Rogers; transcribed, edited and published family letters written in the
1800’s in Old, Old Letters and the memoirs of his maternal grandfather
Rev. Charles L. Cox (1881-1982).
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