Summer Hill

Summer Hill

My feet sideways

Crabwalking

Up the hill so steep the horses walk around it

And up through the old woods

To crop the summer grass

Once there, I am above the trees

I study

This is impossible, I say

This glacier canyon side

In North Carolina

On a class trip to Linville,

The ranger said we were standing in once Africa

Without understanding,

I walk down and sit

In the cooling grass below

In turkey feathers, I twirl them

In the future, we think they were once dinosaurs

Chicken-minded, tiger striped wings

Running on dragon legs

From nothing

Must I shut this from my mind?

Other children seem happy

To be in the present

Never thinking of the past

But I always go back, so long

I once knew a man named Lazarus,

From Africa

Who came to far away Carolina

For his children

In the shadow now

Water passes in its circle

Through the dark canyon

Eternal, healing miracle resurrection 

Memory -

Above me, there is a log barn

Its chinks long dropped and decayed

And above that

Up the long obtuse incline

One of the old men, Virgil

Looked into this valley

Cattle-worn

And succumbed to disease

Strangled himself

Memory: In the attic of the barn, I find a military cot

A leather saddle losing its sheep-skin, liquor bottles

Among the patchwork cattle is a wild pony from Assateague

I hide and watch it

Fearful, burred, alone with the cattle

White eyes rolling, it bolts from men

Clattering smooth creek stones

Into the valley, disappears

Now, this is purely in my mind

I keep it there, always recurring

Should I put this away?

Is there more in this to know?

I look for crows

I hide back in the weeds with a slingshot

Tearing at the forks

From launching the blue black state gravel

Always swinging wide, landing near where

The crows had been

My mother said if I killed one,

She would hang it from my neck

To fix my dark mind

The chainsaw roars

Vibrating the tall, dead oak

Beneath it, I am small

Carrying cut limbs to the metal barrow

One falls from the sky

And I go away

Into memory

A dark path

Two crows are fighting

The winner flies away

The other, looks to me

Mouth open

A red, buzzard head on a crow body

In my mind it says:

                                   I am done

                                   Send me back

                                   Have mercy

                                   Crush me

I think back

Immediately to a dark time

When my mind died

And was resurrected

To feel with things

And so I am an instrument

For living now.

Nearby is a red steel pole

And in my hands it passes the old soul

With a final squawking breath

In the creek are small black spirals

Clung to smooth stones

The pulse and breath of the resurrection

The force that shaped the valley floor

With their small gray tongues

They move in inches

No memory

No time, no time