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zoe richardson
Cross-cut Saw
Pine trees marching
Towering toothpick soldiers
With matchstick arms
And bristlecone fingers
Up and down the peaks
Cresting the ridge and falling
Silently down the slope
Hidden whispers in the gullies
Knobby skinned pine
Topography for fingertips
Flaky black piecrust pieces
In little girl hands
Fresh needles
Old blankets padding
Footsteps and mattresses
Sticky sharp-sweet resin
Beaded amber on palms
No one asks the pine for knowledge
Never sought out wisdom from
Its rings but survival is a wisdom
Passed down from trees
Everywhere you look there are
Sentinels of endurance
Ragged Confederate foot soldiers
I slip my ghosts
Between the white blonde wood
And take my place in line
Song of the Black Warrior
Write what you know, I once was
told and this is what I know: purple
edged ridges stacked up against
the midnight to robins egg sky.
Bald pine trees in a gully
or straight and sparse on the brim.
Industry leached out what was gettable
black nuggets, logs and rocks. Men took away
pieces of my home, stripped those same
peaks and hollers naked. Prosperity was
something that went out of my county
and grew up elsewhere.
Autumn turns the hardwoods to amber.
Fat possums and turkey vultures scavenge
for the ever present roadkill. In winter all the
world seems brown like a stained gold velvet
dress worn too many times and handed down.
Spring will come again with the illusion
all things become new again but dead is
dead all the same.
I tried so hard to get away and yet nowhere
else ever seemed to fit my heart or my feet.
This is my legacy, coal slag and red rock
old men with hacking coughs and barefoot
illiterate children. But the river is also my legacy
muddy brown in winter and greenish-grey
in summer. This place never changes and yet
this river never remains the same.
Business is transient and industry a fleeting
dream. Coal and steam and timber didn't defeat
these people so I guess poverty and preachers
won't now. I didn't come back to beat them and
I sure didn't come back to join them. I came back
because I finally learned what I could not learn
when I was young. No one else will ever understand
you until you understand yourself. And no matter where
you end up in this world, you still never quite manage
to climb higher than your roots.
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