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Return
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20 Return 1. Back through the trackless dust and testaments back through the blind names and photographs I cross Green River by twilight pulling the eastern darkness behind me into the rising west Kentucky night its power to heal its power to bring down and make nothing back through the bus trips and found coins and baptisms through the crippled hours and landmarks dropping down the Knobs into Muhlenberg night moths flashing in the headlights sparks released from their flame off to the left and to the right pools of white spotlight nailing the black stripped landscape — shovels squatting in the coal fields scraping away 21 the overburden raising the dark waste to the surface smell of sulfur smoke and dust back through the links of chain and fallen ashes back through the grace notes and little offerings crossing the Purchase farmlands where the rich hand of blessing has passed over and moved on planks of the barns and cattlesheds like ribs separating breath of life gone out of them burley stalks unclenching corn in its tattered silks whispering back through the scattered bricks and lost mirrors back to the western lakes where Bethel Grove lies buried beneath the black water of my grandmother’s memory crossing the Barrens by a hardscrabble moon gospel fighting static out of Thornton Gap: “The Father waits over the way in a land that is fairer than day [3.235.249.219] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:04 GMT) 22 to prepare us our mansion of rest . . .” I am going back to seek my place in the abandoned past running shoulder to shoulder with the Illinois Central long iron rail by short cross tie endless ladder pointing home. 2. Dawn hauls in with the coal trucks grinding down the causeway to Gracey Landing to unload. First light: leaning on a rail looking south from the dam’s observation deck — penstock and tailrace pumping the dark heart buried deep below me — watching the lake give up its ghosts white mist retreating back into the coves and locust hollows back up Dividing Ridge where the elders and elms and sycamores gather. 23 Sunk beneath the spread waters the river itself lost to the land channel buoys marking the grave link chain of barges fishing boats and runabouts already drawing long scars across the surface lake gulls working the shallows — confettied scraps of gray light banking and falling falling pulling free to rise again. [3.235.249.219] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:04 GMT) 24 " They were married on one of the old steam packets, on their wedding trip up to Cerulean Springs. “Took cabin fare, too,” Grandpa Woodford said. “Wouldn’t take deck fare on such a trip as that.” They would’ve been your great-great-grandparents, Grandma and Grandpa Woodford. He was a tobacco buyer out of Clarksville, Tennessee. She was from over east, in Trigg County. They’d met at a school fair in Birmingham. He told her that if she’d let him court her, he’d take her to Cerulean Springs for a honeymoon. “So she did,” he said, “and I did.” You’ve seen the pictures. Them sitting on that long porch of the Springs Hotel, in their summer shirts. Drinking mint tea out of crystal goblets. They named Mother after the boat they were married on — The Sallie Grace. ...