The Walking Poet of Rotan
“The
tree said to the leaf, get off of me, it’s time for you to go. The leaf left the tree. As I was walking on that particular day a leaf as light as could be slowly drifted to the ground, not knowing where it would land other than in my hand.”
I met Debbie Toliver in the offices of the Double Mountain Chronicle, the newspaper in Rotan. She walked there from her home south of town. She walks a lot because she doesn’t drive or own a car. Debbie has been writing poetry since 2015 when her sister died.
“She was my only sister and I’m the baby. When I got home after being born she put me in her doll buggy and put me by the stove so I could be warm. She used to call me ‘my baby.’ She wanted a sister so bad. She had three brothers.
“The first poem I wrote was about her,” says Debbie. “It’s called YOU’RE NOT THERE. I got inspired the night before the funeral. The words just came to me. It was my way of coping with grief.
“You went away so suddenly. When the sun rises you’re not there. When the sun goes down you’re not there. When the wind blows you’re not there. When the wind ceases you’re not there. When it rains you’re not there.”
Debbie’s poems have been published in international poetry anthologies.
“The sun beats down on my already darkened skin. A pearl of sweat rolls down my face as a butterfly lands next to it and waves its delicate wings back and forth and seems to be showing me that I, too, am beautiful with or without wings.”
She is listed in Who’s Who in American Poetry.
“I shut my eyes to the pain in the world, the cruelty that looms around me. I shut my eyes because I can’t bear to see what happens next. I shut my eyes when the person standing in front of me says stay back. Don’t come any closer. I don’t know where you’ve been.”
Sometimes she writes about walking.
“I walk and you just pass me by. I walk in the bitter cold and you just pass me by. I walk in the smothering heat and you just pass me by. I have only one request for you. When I lay dead in my casket just pass me by.” She writes with pen and paper. “I’m not a computer person. I’m old school. I love to write. I’ve written so many poems it’s hard to keep up with. I don’t know where the inspiration comes from, but when it does, I have to write it down. I can hear it, the words and their rhythm. The words just appear on the paper. Sometimes the poems come in pieces and I have to put them together. I think it’s a God given gift and I want to share it with anybody I come in contact with.”