Issue
1:2 | Poetry |
Ron Rash
How like
a phonograph's groove
the whorls
in these pews and walls,
and because
wood absorbs sound
it is
easy to believe
that every
voice that ever
raised
song or prayer in this church
survives
in the oak, ingrained
like trunk
rings that ripple out
from some
long-back beginning.
SOAPSTONE
A stone
as soft as its name,
so soft
an ax or saw could
free slabs
for chimney or hearth,
though
used not just for living,
chiseled
by kin or neighbor,
then raised
in mountain graveyards
to give
new dead a last name,
and while
overshadowed now
by granite
and marble, still
found
in those graveyards, the stones
whittled
down by wind and rain,
lichen-flaked,
letters erased,
although
you know where names were—
the side
faced east, placed that way
so the
dead would some dawn wake
to a risen
son who would
need no
stones to know their names.
THE
CURE
What secret
beyond right measure
of salt
and brown sugar? His neighbor
believed
it was how he butchered
under
full moons, though others ventured
the woodshed—
odor of cedar and oak
steeping
pork slabs dangled from rope,
the way
streaked dark seemed best to hold
a brighter
flavor. No one would know
until
years later his widowed wife
found
tucked back on a springhouse shelf
one dust-soaked
mason jar, inside
a clear
thickening like some late July
ripple
of midday heat-haze distilled,
spread
over winter's meat-hoard to seal
and cure,
scratched on the paraffin
Chestnut Blossom 1927
Ron Rash