written in about 10 minutes for a kentucky state parks poetry contest when i was trying to prove to a group of students that you really can sit down and write about memories in the form of a poem. if i recall correctly, i was showing them how to break lines. amazing how many good poems came out of that lesson -- and one student even received an honorable mention in the high school division.

after I had made a couple of trips back and forth to breathitt county this summer to deliver books and supplies to a school ravaged by a flood last mother's day, i began to wonder about where my great grandmother (for whom i am named) lived. i think i actually found the house, based on what i think it looked like in my memory. who knows. maybe if i took mom there with me she could confirm. on the first trip jay was with me. we drove along the flood route to view the devastation. the scene still haunts me.

so i "plead poetic license" for a lot of the imagery -- considering I was incredibly young when we used to make trips to jackson, it is surely more fiction than fact. i remember fragments, as do most of us, of family trips to visit relatives. i remember smells and sounds, rooms and configurations of rooms. so strange. anyway, here's the poem:


Along the Mountain Parkway

along the Mountain Parkway
on the way to the Gorge, to the Bridge
faint, distant echoes of ancestral voices
speak to me at each mile marker --
great-grandmother, grandmother
aunts, uncles, cousins
and my Daddy --

to welcome me back to the hills
that birthed my family

each railroad track rippling
against the coal-streaked hillsides
serves as a roadmap back home –
a reminder of wheezy, queasy
childhood backroad trips to Eastern Kentucky
the Clifty Wilderness, the family home
before the four-lane was finished . . .

wandering and winding through the lands of my ancestors,
the trail to Natural Bridge leads my mind
to pathways of memories long-lost –

of downy-soft feather beds in an ancient atti
cchickens and roosters pecking in the front yard
the whoosh of shuffleboard in the side yard
the intoxicating incense of applewood
from a pipe in the company room
mingled with smells of Saturday breakfast
emanating from the kitchen --
sorghum molasses, pungent cured ham and savory sausage
jam from blackberry briars, butter from a churn

Nana’s strong, sinewy fingers
deftly kneaded the buttermilk biscuit dough;
I studied each movement like a critic
clinging to Nana’s apron, dodging flour dust.

strong-willed, sure-footed Nana
who could wring a chicken’s neck in one hand
and gesticulate with the other
while admonishing
keep an eye on the young-uns

mountainous multi-tasking at its finest
our own family natural monument.

And I wonder if that’s where it came from
the emphatically strong work ethic
the serene sense of security
the longsuffering loyalty to family
to friends
to education
to beliefs and values . . .
to my home --
to the natural wonders of Kentucky.

Nana’s blood runs rampant in my veins
like coal that streaks the Appalachian mountainside
predictable as the winding railroad tracks on which
Daddy carried the same coal as an engineer
and that always brought him right back home

as strong as the bridge I stand on now,
surveying what secures the past to the present

along the mountain parkway