Night on Craig Mountain

Night on Craig Mountain Smelling of deerhide and sweat, tougher than raw leather, they stalked like Indians through these hills, cut trails through rhododendron brakes, built fires against the wild-eyed night, wrapped themselves in skins and slept, callused hands close beside long rifles. This was no Wordsworthian landscape, daffodilled and idyllic. The dreams that belonged to a privileged few were left behind like winding streets that curled past debtors' prisons. What was here as they stalked these twisting trails was not a dream for others. It was real, something they could own. Here loneliness was a salve, and black skies beyond the trees burned with stars. At night now on this mountain cicadas' rusty screams rise above a spring-fed creek; only this ancient earth remembers the soft pad of moccasined feet. —Sue Scalf Lillian My little friend. Your life here was poetry written in black and white, Your feet punctuating with exuberance in your growth and with patience in your old age. You saw when I didn't (though your eyesight was failing) and told me what I needed to know (though you never spoke a word). I used to wonder how you could do that. Now your poetry is no longer in black and white. I wonder what colors you are writing now and what kind of punctuation shapes your verse? —Pat Gailey To a Friend Hurting If you express to me things I don't or can't understand, I am sorry. Because I do want to know your sufferings. I want to feel your feelings. I want to make you whole, or as close as you would become, if you were a child again— with your face leaning against the fence, and the horses at the far edge of the field coming toward you in the moonlight. —Jeff Hardin 73 ...