First Memory

      Dragonflies dip, rise. Their backs

      catch light, purple like church glass.

      Gray barn planks balance on stilts,

      walk toward the pond’s deep end.

      A green smell simmers shallows,

      where tadpoles flow like black tears.

      Minnows lengthen their shadows.

      Something unseen stirs the reeds.

The Trout in the Springhouse

      Caught by my uncle

      in the Watauga River,

      brought back in a bucket

      because some believed

      its gills were like filters,

      that pureness poured into

      the springhouse’s trough pool,

      and soon it was thriving

      on sweet corn and biscuits,

      guarding that spring-gush,

      brushing my fingers

      as I swirled the water

      up in my palm cup

      tasted its quickness

      swimming inside me.

Milking Traces

      The paths between pasture, barn

      were no straight lines but slow curves

      around a hill that centered

      thirty acres. To a child

      those narrow levels seemed like

      belts worn on the hill’s bulged waist,

      if climbed straight up, tall steps for

      stone Aztec ruins—though razed

      each time dawnlight peaked landrise,

      belts and steps became sudden

      contrails from planets circling

      the sun’s blaze, planets disguised

      with cow hide, the furrowed skin

      of an old woman’s visage.

Sleepwalking

      Strange how I never once woke

      in a hall, on a porch step,

      but always outside, bare feet

      slick with dew-grass, the house

      deeper shadow, while above

      moon leaning its round shoulder

      to the white oak’s limbs, stars thrown

      skyward like fistfuls of jacks.

      Rising as if from water

      the way dark lightened, it all

      slow-returning, reluctant,

      as though while I’d been sleeping

      summoned away to attend

      matters other than a child’s

      need for a world to be in.

Woodshed in Watauga County

      Leaking in the one window,

      candle shallow, then deepened,

      caught-light gathered on gray planks

      like a bowl filling slowly,

      a simmer of late summer

      distilled to dull yellow glow,

      thickening air like honey

      as mud daubers and dust motes

      drifted above like moments

      unmoored from time, and the world

      and the sun aligned, grew still.

Junk Car in Snow

      No shade tree surgery could

      revive its engine, so rolled

      into the pasture, left stalled

      among cattle, soon rust-scabs

      breaking out on blue paint, tires

      sagging like leaky balloons,

      yet when snow came, magical,

      an Appalachian igloo

      I huddled inside, cracked glass

      my window as I watched snow

      smooth pasture as though a quilt

      for winter to rest upon,

      and how quiet it was—the creek

      muffled by ice, gray squirrels

      curled in leaf beds, the crows mute

      among