Shooting Creek by Cy Dillon

Charlie Poole wouldn't know it now With Moran's and all those other Frame houses by the road burned and gone One or two still stand empty Behind the wild growth of neglect The tamed music of the place Comes only from falling water Or calls of forest birds There's not a banjo or fiddle To be heard in the gorge today And over-sprung Fords Once so loud and envied Rust quietly in weeds Tall as a draft horse Summerhouses and a few secluded farms Lie quiet in the shadows of coves Bare earth yards Worn by the bare feet of generations Gone under layers of oak and poplar leaves Here and there an overgrown wall Bears witness in an unexpected place To growing corn and erosion Cutting every stick that would saw or burn Until the ground was worn smooth as a puncheon floor But the hard living only made music sweeter White liquor more intoxicating Even my Grandfather admitted to hauling a load or two from there Cruising for pulpwood across the state When tires and gas were rationed but thirst was unrestrained He never could quite tell me why This narrow gorge in the escarpment's face was so memorable The light in his eye was the only hint of what he felt What is there to say about the persistence of human joy Where none should be The quiet beauty of a resurgent forest Sad and empty as a forgotten song

PREVIOUS TABLE OF CONTENTS NEXT Biography

Copyright © 2024 by Red River Review. First Rights Reserved. All other rights revert to the authors. No work may be reproduced or republished without the express written consent of the author.