Katie Myers

We called the ridge after her, lonesome jagged

furrow that it was, barely level enough

ground to scratch out a road, the cady mar

was how it sounded in the olden tongue,

spoken still by ones too young to recall

who she was, or what she did, or how she

came to be there, alone, we heard, in such

place as that, dire dreadful sovereign place.

Not arable land, too steep for food crops,

for grazing animals, but not barren.

Every bright kind of mountain wildflower

grew there, wild phlox, columbine, mayapple,

those good only for pretty, and those good

for bile, canker, thrush-mouth, and swimmy head,

bitter roots boiled down to tea, or stirred round

with whiskey, rock candy, and glycerin.

She was none of the Fate Myers people,

or unclaimed kin if she was, those few who

prospered and lived in town, who bought up

all the roadside farms of the county seat.

Driving her ridge at night was riding with

the ghost, doing whatever he told you.

Her ridge at night. Cabin stitched right into

the forest floor, windowless, door hanging

by the bottom hinge, like some drunkard flung

aside, but with one foot still planted firm,

its shingles seemed to reach across the road

toward trees from which they were descended.

She could have lived there, century before last,

if stories be trusted, if damp wood holds

together in that sunless stretch of slant,

where black snakes drape from the shoulder

so languorously car wheels catch and grind

them into strips of pink and black taffeta.

Once your grandfather told of a candle

wavering a lone flame in the window,

light where both sun and moon are strangers,

his car first slowing down, then taking off

at full speed, exactly like his heartbeat,

her shadow, he hoped, left far behind him.