The Sunday Poem: Crossing the Smokies

I just got back from two days camping in what passes for mountains in this county — up past Julian, with the Cub Scouts, at Mataguay. I got plenty of photos and not much sleep. So I am tired and cranky and have missed a few days of the Internet, much less the blog.

Driving from mountain valley down to home called to mind a very old poem, from when Kristen and I made a similar, much longer traversal, moving from Maryland to Alabama, driving down the spine of the Smokies. I dusted it off and did a largish rewrite. So here it is:

Crossing the Smokies

The ridge, he rose sedimented, stocky,
Stone burst from soil, shedding grass
Like stiff foam waves.

The ground, he rocked eager: boulders
Rolling off mountain flanks spun
and harpooned through the air.

Men mined him, pulled fatty silver veins;
Carved granite heart and sold his pelt;
Swath-cut him to make a road from bones.

And still he surfaced all plain over,
Sinuous and slick with springs,
Humming eerie echo songs.

He rumbled and ranted, volcanic diatribes:
Plates and magma, pumice, shafts;
Death stories all stones know.

His fragments litter graveyards.
His forehead grows a breathless pine.
From strident cracks a river ripples.

He births madness, frontiers, cemeteries, cribs.
My wife and I, we rode that devil’s backbone
Through the swaying, shivering night.