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South Through Kentucky
The yellow moon rides low, expectant
as a summer melon
to light my way through places our
longhunter forefathers
named: Madison, Rockcastle, Laurel.
Off the interstate,
the moon roosts among emblems for
fast food & vacant hotels.
Further South, I pass Gray, Bailey’s
Switch, Bimble,
the three acres where your
grandparents lived their last years.
Each mile past Flat Lick and the
Narrows grows closer to home.
Always ahead, the moon hangs before
me like a greedy owl,
seeing what I can’t yet see. On the
other side of the mountain,
the moon with the harvest flair
transforms to shining bone-
white orb. I decide there must be two
moons:
one in the country of your youth, one
here to mark your grave.
We are Called to Reinvent Ourselves
It takes so little to become disoriented
when walking in the woods.
I attempt
to retrace my path
home, but the trail moves
or I do
and in a flash, I forget all I should know.
Light romances its way through the tree canopy,
dances on branches, stipples against bark.
Flickers of blue might be feathers,
are more likely slips of sky.
Singing birds hidden in the leaves
refuse to reveal themselves.
The log fallen long ago
is a dun colored buck
standing stone still, hind quarters glistening.
You can spend a lifetime memorizing a place,
the trails and trees, the land’s lay and water’s flow
dividing your dreams from those
who walked there before you.
It is the shank of the day,
but is it the foreshank or the hindshank?
2:00 a.m. at Three Crow Bar
Tiffany wants to talk to Jesus.
She means the man who looks like Christ
sitting at Three Crow’s last bar stool.
He doesn’t look like the real Christ—
not a brown-skinned Middle Eastern man,
doing good—but a bearded European
like the masters painted. Cesare Borgia
with sleepy eyes. She is always like this
after too many Amaretto Sours.
She makes up names for strangers,
borrows their sun glasses and hats
when she’s told it’s time to leave.
Can we take Jesus with us,
she asks.
Only in our hearts, baby girl. Only in our hearts.
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