Graphic: remixed photo "I am a retired coal miner living in Bristol VA. In 1998, I won first place in the Virginia Highlands Adult Poetry Contest. In 1999, I placed second. This year, I placed second in the Virginia State Poetry Society's Edgar Allen Poe Memorial Contest. I am an Appalachian, and proud to be so. I am also a member of the Appalachian Center for Poets and Writers." August 2000 Loss Dawn: islands in fog, these ridges- beachheads where nothing moves but me. The redbird's song is a flute in its case. Shadows skirt beeches like black slips. Dryland fish flop in the ginseng sack when I step over a log. You loved them halved, rolled in meal and cayenne pepper, butter-sauteed in an iron skillet on top the Buck stove. Death, Grandma, is like mushroom spores the wind scatters; only the living wade fog, hunting for what they have lost. I know their haunts- the lee side of stumps and rotting bellies of downed logs; April mornings, I bag them for you as I did when I was a child. When I eat them now they bring tears, taste like dirt. Dryfork Psalm For Grandpa The sun come back: GET UP, you sorry bastard man admonishes mule, slaps reins to withers. The jack hunkers in his traces; slab muscles bunch--knuckles in a glove--under hide sweat-black, white-rime with salt; gravel in a fist, his jaws grind the steel shaft under his tongue--an extension of reins, man's hands, mule's muzzle--a controlled thrust that throws him into the doughnut collar. Iron shoes, hooves two hand-spans wide, drive his lunge; chaff crackles, sandstone flares when metal slams through March frost to a less grudging clay. Steam wreathes the mule's flanks and barrel, boils off the blunt angles of his head-- the white bank, sour clover stench his chest leans hard into. Nose to ground, the plowshare separates dirt and rock, turns the corn stubble last fall's burn missed. Noon: two acres turned; round stones and a hat-full of fire. Hoe-cakes burnt black in lard. The mule splays his legs, sucks water from the creek. Faith is harsh prose: Dryfork dirt busted with brute force; the gee and haw that plunges the mule left and right, saws the lead rein's edge around the driver's neck; the plow's handles jerking flesh from palms when the spade fouls under a rock. Blinders hold the jack's eye to this row, and no other; the man staggers along in his tracks. Sun behind the ridge, four acres turned; one swipe left, and the barn. Tomorrow, the skid, and a day's worth of stone. Wednesday-- furrows to lay off; corn to sow.

Graphic: photo by Don Silvius, WV Stone church

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text © Rufus Skeens, graphics © Jeannette Harris, 2000. All rights reserved.