The Holler's Secrets at Dark

Mountain dark falls here the way grief falls,

all at once,

swallowing the woodpile, the cornfield,

the road that wound its way to us

and gave up.

*

Soup beans have simmered since morning

on the cast iron stove,

and that smell alone

could bring a grown man to his knees,

could make him think of his mother,

of her mother,

of every woman who ever stood

at a stove like this one

and fed somebody back to life.

*

Outside, the mountains

have closed themselves around us

like a hand around something precious,

something they are not ready

to let go.

*

A clothesline cracks like a sling shot

against the February wind

and I startle,

then settle,

the way you learn to do

living this far up a holler,

where every sound comes

as a small surprise.

*

No light burns out there now.

Only the creek, running through absolute dark,

following its old business,

the same water that ran here

before my grandfather's grandfather

ever drew a breath.

*

Up past Old Man Norton's place,

a hound has been raising his voice

to a sky that offers him nothing,

that cold complaint carrying down

through bare branches

until it reaches me

at this window,

and I think,

brother, I know.

*

There are rusted cars beyond the tree line,

and February has stripped everything back

so you can see them plain now,

sumac stalks rattling their dry seed heads

around what used to be a hood,

those old Fords and Chevys

slowly becoming

part of the hill they sit on,

the way everything up here

eventually does.

*

A fiddle came through here once,

a man playing on a tailgate

while the cold February sky

stood witness above him,

and I remember thinking

this is what it sounds like

when a place sings about itself.

*

I feed another log to the stove.

It ticks, it settles, it breathes.

It holds off the enormous dark

one hour at a time,

the way people do

who have learned that survival

is not one great act

but a thousand small ones,

a fire tended,

a pot watched over,

a door closed shut

against cold that has no opinion of you,

that would take you

as easily as it takes

everything else.

*

But tonight, it cannot have me.

Tonight, there are soup beans

and cornbread turning brown at the edges

and that hound still singing

to whatever doesn't answer,

and I am warm

in a way that feels borrowed,

that feels like something

I will one day have to return,

so, I hold it,

the way you hold

anything you love

that was never really yours

to keep.