Down Brown's Run

Contributors Joanne Brannon Aldridge, Boone, NC Bob Henry Baber, Ashland, KY Randy Ball, Rogersville, TN Garry Barker, Berea, KY Anne Billson, Miami, FL J. J. Cromer, Tazewell, VA Mark DeFoe, Buckhannon, WV James B. Goode, Cumberland, KY David Graham, McMinnville, TN Joyce Griggs, Berea, KY Richard Hague, Cincinnati, OH Kathleen M. Jacobs, Charleston, Wv Loyal Jones, Berea, KY Larry William Koontz, Nashville, TN Kathy Lyday-Lee, Burlington, NC Rachel McCampbell, Venice, CA Glenn McKee, Waterville, ME Kyle McQueen, Berea, KY Jeff Daniel Marion, New Market, TN Steve Mooney, Lexington, KY Sherrell R. Nuzum, Parkersburg, WV Juanita K. Pence, Cincinnati, OH Rebecca Phillips, Knoxville, TN Faye Powell, Cullowhee, NC Charles Rampp, Point O'Rock, MD Paul Ramsey, Chattanooga, TN S. Paul Rice, Conway, SC Marijane G. Ricketts, Kensington, MD Kinloch Rivers, Salisbury, NC James Still, Hindman, KY Shannon Wilson, Berea, KY Song of Elsie She came from a small, vanilla-scented world where sassafras grows thin and bent beneath the shadows of thick pines. A world where spring days smell of plowed red earth and summer afternoons are edged with the fragrance of sun hot hay. She came with childhood songs of Jesus, one-room schools, neighbors, and cellar houses full and filling. I sing still those childhood songs, drink sassafras at dusk, trace my palms, with red and yellow, black and white, hear always the patient footsteps at my side and her back-ridge voice calling my name. Down Brown's Run At two in the afternoon, even sunlight loses its way and climbs a tree to lookout for direction. Far west a redbird burns in a poplar. By three, the creek makes night tunes in the bends where moss beds down all summer. By four, everything is dim as tintypes of old homesteads. By nine, fog settles on the wrecked well where a single eye of moonlight shimmers in the bottom, forty lean years deep. -Sherrell R. Nuzum -Richard Hague 80 ...