Athwominie

At a camp on the Watauga River

near Sycamore Shoals,

the revival preacher’s railing

for crosses in the West

bores into Crescent’s father’s ear.

The frontier’s flirting terminus

girdles the man

like the marks

of a new township

across a stand of old growth.

He calls for a blessing

before they depart for Kentucky,

names the boys

arrows in his quiver

and promises them all a place

where men stand thin and lordly

on the velvet skin of the land.

The whole family is swallowed

like rotgut swirling

in the mouth

of the Wilderness Trail.

Each sweating mile

is a load of nails and coffee

to sell at the revivals,

calico bolts and rosewater jingling

in the saddlebags across the mule’s flanks

as the distances between settlements grow longer.

His mama’s quaking fear

seeps into the wagon.

A woman tallying love

for her children—last to leave her body

most dearly,

but no massacre cuts the wagon train

as she might have imagined.

Crescent slips the seam

easy as a swallow’s nest

knocked to earth.

He stretches his legs,

westering on the trail

and calls it in a whisper

Athwominie, the young down

of his tongue

nibbling away

at the Cherokee syllables.

By summer, they have traced the path

of all the major revivals

along the Kentucky River.

At Boonesborough,

Crescent escapes

from the merchant tent

to the horse lot.

Men pay him in swigs of whiskey

and sticky nubs of boiled candy

to hold the leads

of their fractious horses

prancing as the call-and-reply of the sinners

echoes out to them.

And what come ye out

into the wilderness to see?

Across the fields,

grown men prostrate themselves

in fits of religious fervor.

Prone across the wilted prairie grass,

they are so small from the boy’s vantage

like switched children hollering

their agony out

over the lilting grass tops.

Thy sins are all forgiven thee.

Crescent shatters

the hard confections

against his molars,

flicks a horsefly from his shoulder.