They cut into the stone and give us strange artifacts, the spirits that live inside, gathered timber piled neatly and facing the dark blue sky, the horses exhausted, and the rain comes, we are thankful.
The old logging roads are sweet with pine straw and mulch, it's soft to the touch like cedar bricks, the metal under-pinning of the McIntyre lumber trucks is an ugly yellow in case they hit stumps, the ingenuity of the Appalachians, barefoot children and violence that sparks from nothing and lasts an eternity within the mountain web, life among the sawgrass and lemon trees full of wild berries and blooming flowers, chemical splotches of paint in the river, the slimy red mud on the bank, an intoxicated firelight lashing at the shadows, at sunrise when the sun looks like a blood-soaked egg, I will run through the fields like a wild savage, the rain continues, we are thankful.