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.