afieldnotebook

East Tennessee

Fields humped up
bordered with cedars.
Here and there a pale
flash of Cumberland
limestone like an ancient
creature rolling up.
Breaching. Never
far under the grass.

Few folk left now
with the bone so close
in their faces. Hard
to scrape a living
behind a mule. Hard
even to bury the dead.
People who if they
didn’t shoot fed you
and passed the jug.

Headlights hauling
the car from hollow
to hollow, turning
the dial—the little
stations still remember
and you can sing
along. Sometimes
whatever the fiddle
saws falls apart
and leaves a voice—

a wail like bare wire
lifting up and away
from the cedars along
the fencerows like dark
torches against a sky
the sun’s forsaken
into which from somewhere
stars are wandering.

-Edward Wilson