false356722femaleGeorgetown, KY09/200708/2009100true6138379read0true771521currently-reading0true771520to-read
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/193301-please-post-your-poem-for-september-s-goodreads-contest
http://photo.goodreads.com/groups/1182288212p2/233.jpg356722Christinahttp://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto-F-50x66.jpg
http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/356722-christina
Sat, 15 Aug 2009 09:02:46 -0700 When you're on one, these logging roads seem small:
narrow lanes, cleared of all but gravel, grit,
and usefulness. Number 1508 winds and climbs
from Lookout Creek toward Blue River Ridge,
innocuous as the green garter snake
crossing this bare space between the forests
with sibilant grace ahead of my truck.
To my right, vistas sink down through trees
old as this country, then span out toward Lookout
Mountain to the east. I shift down, drive up
another rise, pull sharply left, then ease
to the right, climbing even when it seems I'm not.
The scars of logging jar my sight: a rough slough
of bared earth scours the mountainside
where the fragile road clings like desperation
or hope to the bony ledge. Dashed
against the mountain’s crest, heavy clouds
split, their loads spilt with no amends
to tree or truck: water seeking its level,
roiling along the road in torrents, roaring
over ridges in brown rivers of rocks and ruin.
It's hard to tell now, if the road inclines or drops
slowly down, my sense of equilibrium
in this world of two-hundred foot trunks is skewed—
the only clue a slow lowering of perspective:
trees crouching closer to the hillside
as I round a slow curve, bank upward,
then stop short where a ten-foot pine stands
upright in the center of the road, where stones
and soil spill fifteen feet onto the roadway.
The hill’s slide embraces the doomed tree
as I once did my dying child: knowing the truth
of life’s fragility, not willing to give her up
to death. She lived. The tree will not. But
for now, ragged roots cling to this mound
of detritus torn from the clear-cut mountain’s
flank. I understand that fight to stand
upright when everything around is sharp
angles and precipices, when the only level
space is narrow and hard and full of driving rain
that sluices earth from underneath
your footing, and all that remain are jagged
stones and bare roots greedy for life.
I turn the truck around—pull forward, rock back—
daring myself to look over the precipice at the edge
of the road where the secret names of all things
below are "slide" or "loosen" or "release," where old
snags hunch close to the ground beneath
the umbrella of timorous fir, and bitter
rainwater whispers the only song it’s ever known
to the earth and to the listening stones.