Leaving Macon County

A Poem

Leaving Macon County

Thin tall and yearning,
trees pushed the way where
my mother pointed through.

There she made a show
of bravery with snakes,
unafraid and bold,

telling enemy
from friend, amused when
they coiled up to strike,

under turkey foot and
galax, pungent green and
spreading with the earth.

My folk pick Christmas
greens nearby, to sell for
merriment and mirth,

but here the stems fall shallow,
home for salamander
or wayward cone.

--

We always knew best
the slow and gnarled trees,
with trickster roots and

knots for elves or sprites
or some such spirit, waiting
quiet in the dark.

My grandma said
these hemlocks saw your
granddad's days,

when both were young and
springing from some seed,
together on the hills.

Now in this late day
they all have come to grief,
hollowed out and gray,

moss on limbs,
afflicted all around,
dying from inside.

--

I have a board he made,
stained and chipped
and weary of the knives.

He knew the tree that
gave its wood, and he
could tell the time when

some kin had set it out,
watched it grow, tended
til it fell and

called to ask what use
he had for
that old apple tree,

what purpose might there
be for deadening wood
and memory of sap.

Reckon, he had said,
I can use it somehow.
Reckon I will see. 

--

All those tracks are overgrown
that I used to know,
once moved along timeless,

the narrow pass by the 
root cellar, to the creek,
under rhododendron sky.

Nothing laid by there now
for any further season.
No store of green things

for any further time,
no provision for any
future coming day,

no one to 
come after and
know what trees will grow.

My child said tearful leaving,
this feels like my place.