Pact
Abandoned Still on Dismal Mountain
Good Friday, 2006: Shelton Laurel
In a Deerstand Above Goshen Creek
Resolution
The surge and clatter of whitewater conceals how shallow underneath is, how quickly gone.
Leave that noise behind. Come here where the water is slow, and clear.
Watch the crawfish prance across the sand, the mica flash, the sculpen blend with stone.
It’s all beyond your reach though it appears as near and known as your outstretched hand.
I
First Memory
Dragonflies dip, rise. Their backs
catch light, purple like church glass.
Gray barn planks balance on stilts,
walk toward the pond’s deep end.
A green smell simmers shallows,
where tadpoles flow like black tears.
Minnows lengthen their shadows.
Something unseen stirs the reeds.
The Trout in the Springhouse
Caught by my uncle
in the Watauga River,
brought back in a bucket
because some believed
its gills were like filters,
that pureness poured into
the springhouse’s trough pool,
and soon it was thriving
on sweet corn and biscuits,
guarding that spring-gush,
brushing my fingers
as I swirled the water
up in my palm cup
tasted its quickness
swimming inside me.
Milking Traces
The paths between pasture, barn
were no straight lines but slow curves
around a hill that centered
thirty acres. To a child
those narrow levels seemed like
belts worn on the hill’s bulged waist,
if climbed straight up, tall steps for
stone Aztec ruins—though razed
each time dawnlight peaked landrise,
belts and steps became sudden
contrails from planets circling
the sun’s blaze, planets disguised
with cow hide, the furrowed skin
of an old woman’s visage.
Sleepwalking
Strange how I never once woke
in a hall, on a porch step,
but always outside, bare feet
slick with dew-grass, the house
deeper shadow, while above
moon leaning its round shoulder
to the white oak’s limbs, stars thrown
skyward like fistfuls of jacks.
Rising as if from water
the way dark lightened, it all
slow-returning, reluctant,
as though while I’d been sleeping
summoned away to attend
matters other than a child’s
need for a world to be in.
Woodshed in Watauga County
Leaking in the one window,
candle shallow, then deepened,
caught-light gathered on gray planks
like a bowl filling slowly,
a simmer of late summer
distilled to dull yellow glow,
thickening air like honey
as mud daubers and dust motes
drifted above like moments
unmoored from time, and the world
and the sun aligned, grew still.
Junk Car in Snow
No shade tree surgery could
revive its engine, so rolled
into the pasture, left stalled
among cattle, soon rust-scabs
breaking out on blue paint, tires
sagging like leaky balloons,
yet when snow came, magical,
an Appalachian igloo
I huddled inside, cracked glass
my window as I watched snow
smooth pasture as though a quilt
for winter to rest upon,
and how quiet it was—the creek
muffled by ice, gray squirrels
curled in leaf beds, the crows mute
among