Late Winter 1958: Big Sandy Valley

Editor's note: This poem won the James Still Award as the best poem submitted to the Appalachian Writer's Association Contest in 2002. It refers to a school bus wreck in Floyd County, Kentucky, which occurred when the bus slid into theflood-swollen waters of Cow Creek, a tributary of the Levisa Fork ofthe Big Sandy River. Twenty-seven people were killed. LATE WINTER 1958: Big Sandy Valley It's a narrow country: deep waters, Crooked roadbeds, where night Runs black as a coal seam, shrouds Rainy ravines and children are dreams Foregone with the slide of a yellow bus In the fast brown froth of Levisa Fork. Cries snagged like debris On hemlock and willow, Rode the rough circuit of mountains, Breached gaps, settled under rocks Like songs sung for mining men Cranked down dripping shafts Of a morning, never to rise at night, Or the fishermen of Connemara And their ponies, washed up by great Surf under wild western skies. O! For another darkness They sing. —Stephen M. Holt 112 ...