Waking by Ron Rash

Author:Ron Rash
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hub City Press
Published: 2011-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Blue Cat

Like a pirate’s hook, that gaff

the old man roped to his wrist

each spring to probe where logfall

and slow flow calmed the river,

places where arm-long blue cats

gathered to spawn, though he swore

one was longer, its whiskers

waving like whips, black eyes big

as marbles, just a tall tale

until his body washed up

on a sandbar, his gaff still

set deep in the great finned back.

White Wings

Tucked in each pew’s back pocket,

hymnals simmered in mote dust

until Sundays when the soiled

rough hands of farmers lifted

those songbibles, pages spread

like white wings being set free,

but what rose was one voice

woven from many, and heard

by Jason Storey who stood

in a field half an acre

of gravestones away, mute as

a fence post while neighbors sang

inside the church doors he swore

never to pass through after

wife and son died in childbirth,

that long ago Christmas when

three days of snow made the road

to Blowing Rock disappear,

the doctor brought on horseback

arriving too late. Decades

Jason Storey would remain

true to his word, yet was there

in that field come rain or cold,

but came no closer, between

church and field two marble stones,

angel-winged, impassible.

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