Blue Ridge History, 1930-80

Touching the Hawks In September, we sit on a rock on top of Clinch Mountain, behind us an old fire tower creaks rust and wood against the winds. The red sourwoods scorch the sky like cool fires. We watch for the hawks to come reeling in space so blue it holds us. Hour by hour, we search migrating numbers. We walk that edge for one. Two hawks are gliding around us, slow soundless shapes knowing not time, but moments through time, riding the world's curve. -Jill Cox Blue Ridge History, 1930-80 On a high plateau where distant mountains pout in blue-mist solitude and water flows to cool the trout in mica mine's deep pool, the soil still gleams, and sheets of mirror-bright rock prick tawny slopes. The adit is gone, the workers' homes, the labor of the mountaineers, and all the hopes of get-rich-quick are muffled in the hills. -Barbara Van Steenburgh First Snow Charles Edward Clark Come an early snow and summer grass is crocheted white. Crows arc like negative meteors in this sky where the old season's light dies. And fifty miles from here, in the Red Boiling Springs Nursing Home, my grandfather, whose bones are made of that light, rises from his bed on wings sere as his skin and hair, flying homeward as the wings splinter and peel, the moth-sized pieces drifting down like feathers, like ash. -Jim Clark 13 ...