A sign saddles the chain
across the strip mine road:
Do Not Enter.
Feldspar exposed as upturned petticoats, woods still in shock,
blackberry seeds, carried
by the faith of birds,
are the first to claw
the edge of newly impoverished soil.
Anything battered offers
what might be liked better
when diverse forest
was not good enough,
forsaken for rock exploded from beneath.
Still, there is always a price to pay,
even while cobbler
bubbles purple over a browning crust
or a timber rattler stumbles into the clearing, unable to discern,
amid thick berries,
a bird from a small hand.
Eventually, black birch
stamps out the blackberry stand.
A few white pines foot in.
A vertical mine shaft
engages a water table
and spills over, bleeding rust into the creek. A horizontal shaft caves in
under the pressure of dairy cows,
and another surfaces open as a gaping whale outside a potter’s shed,
where the hole adapts
for thrown shards.
Newly dug wells bubble with arsenic.
Sweet stems of the birch do remain good
for chewing during long walks.
But heed my words:
Never
will the quiet
notes
of a
Solomon’s seal
lilt here
again.
The delicate microcosm of humus,
refined by fungi symbiotic with forest roots
into the nutrients and exact pH,
yield orchids so specialized
their pollination requires
one particular species of insect.
Farther below, blue and green gems and quartzite stretch fingers
of illumination through bedrock with a magnetism generated
by planets and stars shifting millions of years into beauty to balm this truth.
Generations away,
no white trillium
will be allowed to offer its hope against the charred forest floor.
So many people in the world,
souls leaping in quickly
to grasp the last opportunity to live, born into suffering.
This is not living.
I want you to live,
to taste huckleberries on your walk,
to smell the negative ions on the cliff
above the roar of the river gorge
with the feeling of peace pulling you back.
I want to give you more
than what I came with,
but the acid sky and
metallic ocean will burn
the earth down to more darkness
than a lonely mine shaft could ever dream up.
After the paintings and books are gone,
can your souls
invent an art to make it worth starting over?
Listen while poetry still
circles you like a moon.
Know that you are the ones
I have always spoken to.
I wanted you to find hidden places
that you would love—
inside rooms of rhododendron
or where miniature yellow lady’s slippers
grow in limestone-rich soil.
Know that I love you,
that I want to meet you,
and that I do not want to bear this cruel message:
Do Not Enter.
This poem first appeared in When Light Waits For Us (2021).
—
Hilda Downer is the author of four collections of poetry the most recent, Wiley’s Last Resort, in 2022. Her second book, Sky Under the Roof, was a Nautilus Golden Poetry Winner. She taught English at Appalachian State University as an adjunct while also working as a psychiatric nurse for almost 30 years. Her love of teaching poetry was fulfilled as a volunteer in local elementary schools and currently at the senior citizens center. She has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including Bloodroot, Crossing the Rift, and One Page Poetry. She received an MFA from Vermont College and is a long term member of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative, the Appalachian Studies Association, the North Carolina Writers Network, and the North Carolina Writers Conference. She grew up in Bandana of Mitchell County, NC, and lives outside of Boone, NC. She has two sons, one a professional fiddler and the other a visual artist/photographer.
