LIVES IN ONE LIFETIME by Nancy Simpson

Sometimes you get what your asked for,

to be left alone.  All day

not once the sound of a motor,

one sailboat only with a yellow flag waving.

From this shore I see where sky begins,

blue between oaks on top of the ridge.

Across Chatuge, the lake made by man,

a whole mountain rises out of the water.

I have no boat and no way to cross over

this flooded valley except to walk.

Where the road was, my feet can touch asphalt

if I let myself sink.

                          Here the house stood.

There is the roof of the barn, buried forty years.

Yes, I am sinking in doubt.

Rubble from lives in one lifetime passes before me.

This is the end, the new start,

rock I remember, and clay soft beneath my feet.

An old logging road leads me up the mountain

where trees stand apart,

where sky begins.

Previously published in The Georgia Review

Included in the poetry collection Night Student

Recently reprinted in Southern Appalachian Poetry

a textbook edited by Marita Garin, McFarland Press