|
Summer 2007
POETRY
How This Had to End
BY ROSE MCLARNEY
Choose David over
Goliath,
a woman too hopeful for white hair
asks the commissioners. She speaks
against the building of an airport —
the overturning of this world,
putting planes above mountains —
with a worn allegory.
How can I better tell this story
of quill pen signed deeds
so you will believe there are eyes
that cry when springs go dry.
I can't. I am, as what I like, little
and lagging. I like the railroad
empty, abandoned to me, without
the arrivals for which it once
lined up and laid down. In disuse,
I like the lynching tree,
now an old oak with its own knots,
and love only men whose memories
end sadly, as will my own,
failing in this. The commissioners
are practical men who appraise cattle,
looking for heartiness and muscle.
Of course they chose Goliath.
And the people who could never
raise the rocks of their hills
to sling, will see mansions
built over them, monstrous
scaffolding skeletons, not fallen,
but fleshing in, arising.
Rose McLarney, of Madison County, N.C., works on the editorial
staff of Lark Books and is earning a master of fine arts in writing
from Warren Wilson College. Her writing was most recently published
in the journal Rivendell.
>> top Comment?
Send it to the editor.
Home | Listen | Fuss | Folks & Neighborhoods | Pickin's & Fixin's Gigs & Such | Dog-Eared | Sightly | Back Porch
© 2006 Swallowtail Press
LLC |
|
