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The Road to Happiness We drive east to the blue-bearded Pisgahs congregating shoulder to shoulder toward Asheville. Intractable mountains, toupeed in white, grant us passage—similar impassable years between mother and daughter. Mist burns off ridgetops like thoughts of winter: far, farther, gone. Last fall in Wales you hiked to cliffs above Swansea Bay, until near the brink you crept on all fours like the spray-tangled sheep, inched into heady wind, sure as the wing of a magpie delighting at the sheer drop. From a globe away, I watched you take shape. Banking the velvet curves past Newfound— talk of boyfriends, happiness, such slippery slopes. I too traveled that dark march of pine, hairpin turns and drop-offs, wild as the route my father drove before the interstate cut through the Cumberlands. Months apart bridged with guessing games and knockknocks , my mother's goodbye of ice and fire, our unspeakable cargo. Now you have seen the cliff wall, though you did not climb with cracked and bleeding hands. Your own father recedes in shadow, my change of heart like stony gates closing. I would mark your destination with an indelible X, but light is shifting in ways only you can read. The road urges us on to the Piedmont. Look how the hills flatten out, how fog lifts its many veils. —Linda Parsons Marion 64 ...

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