Rising Water

Six seasonal short stories from the West Virginia native who has established herself as one of America's best-loved writers of children's books. Only two of the stories are dominated by their mountain settings, but all could easily have happened in the region's cities or towns. Appropriate for the middle elementary grades. Rising Water This is a pilgrimage to unquiet graveslike the people who tend them soon to be removed to a hilltop of thinner, unmemoried soil. Some stranger's fire has been laid among our family's scattered foundation stones, the new lake now taking these ashes with the rest. Our lives, unbound, wing white like family Bibles abandoned, every cherished word to dissolve and flow away. -Valerie Nieman Colander A Widow's Complaint And now the night sounds begin: The crackle of a crunched leaf Lilting in the eddies of air That whip up the whisking debris And send it slamming against a gutter, The dog's vicious bark hailing The dark and a den of roaring demons Let out to cry against the dark and deep. He is gone. He won't come back anymore To most carefully click the lock, To check the windows, To put the rug by the doorTo save her from the night sounds That make little girls in babydoll Pajamas sleep with their daddies. -Marshall Myers Departed Young Arthur's legacy: thirteen spent years deposited as lively grief in his mother's heart. To give pain shrinking space she gathered what she couldhis pocketknife and whistlewrapping them in black for burial in her chiffonier. Kate kept on with her living though wanting to was scarce, never finding easings enough to undo those black strings till her Golden Wedding passed. -Glenn McKee 74 ...