Damascus

The sun has long since left the Gap; the road, pines, and ancient wrinkled houses are left together in a wind-tossed tumult of grey. Inside, the misting windshield. If a heart throbs behind these black windows, it’s muffled beneath the blanket of kudzu that the South has wrought about her, ever-mindful of winter. The only sound is that of the engine, working to demystify the windows and lead me through the Gap.

We are led to long days spent mere feet above a speeding highway, winding through the Carolinas, years ago; how the golden meadows between the northbound and southbound lanes of Interstate 26 inevitably turn to grey, then black, only illumined by oncoming headlights. The hum of another engine, and the popping of acorns as we pull into a driveway; Mom and Dad speak softly, so as not to wake us, the children. We pull the blanket tighter – a blanket of knowledge (or is it ignorance? How confused we are these days!) We look out over the world from an overpass, knowing all its workings; like a flea knows of the bonds and bounds of gravity.

How often do we long for that blanket now, however full of holes? Then at least could we face the night. Now, if not for heartbeats hidden in these houses, we would be lost in the blackening grey, wandering beneath the kudzu blanket.

Sweden, Far West

Sweden, far west –

where the lines intersect as they

quilt the globe. Solitude.

Something cold, like a child

born too early,

in December.

 

I am amidst the pine forests.

Have you felt the mountains

breathing between the trunks?

They whisper, Harsh winter.

 

My sister, a February child,

drives westward home.

We are winter’s children,

frost-kissed but rosy-cheeked –

like Christmas, only younger.

 

My finger traces a line on the globe:

February’s homeward journey.

Outside, summer grows old;

I am homesick for wintertide.

From the Valley

There is an ancient hum, here,

left by the grave of budding industry.

Here, where the cliffs of Signal and Lookout

are our overseers and protectors:

those mountains with degraded

nobility: now common hills on the brink

of Appalachia.

 

1994: I dreamed I would be the first man

            to see the valley from Signal’s peaks.

Insurmountable peaks. Lofty dreams.

Then came the automobile,

and today foreigners summit by way of gasoline;

I sit in quiet protest, as the hum spreads to

heights formerly unmolested.

 

Mount Everest: the top of the world!

Only a blemish on the Earth’s face,

some day will be a scar.

 

And then there is the ocean:

beautiful degrader! Eroder!

Leveler and humbler of all exalted heights!

The crashing of wave after wave after wave

and the soil falls into the depths

and the ice sheets splinter and crack,

the land is retreating, and they say

the water is warming, reefs are dying and

soon there will be no more land

and we must learn to live underwater.

War! Treachery! The flags are raised

and still the ocean swells tear

sand into the darkness.

 

Early morning: the sunrise.

Between the mountains, the leaves

produce a green glow – each a flag of peace

waving as if to say, we will not give in –

as the sun shines through into Lookout Valley.

A wood thrush is on my windowsill,

drowning out an ancient hum.

Stepping Through the Doorframe

There was a man with feet

bronzed by the dirt he’d stepped in –

dirt faded from red to bronze by a southern sun.

He steps over hardwood floors

with skin dry enough to glide

over the panels like ballerinas

dance over undisturbed water.

 

I am a vessel; breathing and moving

as the waters that pour from the

mouths of mountain caves.

I called those mountains ‘home’

as a boy; the light was redder, then.

 

The deadbolt groans coldly

as it serves its nightly purpose.

Metal is unstable: frigid in

my heated living room as the

winter I left behind, outdoors.