Moving the State Line
Around 1815, a stone monument was erected on the west bank of the confluence of the South Fork and Catawba rivers. It marked a critical corner in the much contested 401-mile state line that separates the two Carolinas. When the Catawba was dammed a final time in 1925 to create Lake Wylie, the three-foot-high stone obelisk disappeared beneath the swirling waters.
—Dan Huntley, The Charlotte Observer
The last surveyors marked a tree every mile, numbered
each one: long leaf pine blazed to stand witness,
long fallen now, markers not even a memory—
and that before the waters rushed in, damming
the Catawba, rocky shoals buried, hunting lands,
and one small stone marker, monument carved
NC — SC. Latitude 35.00. Lake Wylie covers
a ghost state beneath, abandoned highway, stumps,
useless ferry, crumpled ruin of barn, farmhouse,
great convocation of bream the only observers
as divers draw boundaries like the long chalk line
on the children’s floor, faint marker of separation,
more dust. Consider the permanence of lines drawn
in water: no echolocation can trace old edges, so faint,
never real. Smooth soapstone surface buried in silt,
old hard core of earth still supporting the weight of line.
Once sharp words dim and soften each shift of current.
This water, not too deep for divers, but too deep for time,
hiding a line that existed unobserved, or never existed,
may yet be mapped by surveyors of our ancient world.
What story this stone tells, what marker lies mute,
what matters this line, past echo of divide.
Moving House
iii
Suspended
in a circle of green,
this house shows no signs
of settling. A gust of wind
might carry it away.
Our two forks rattle
in the breeze, blowing
through the kitchen.
We catch them
at dinnertime, wipe
them through the dew.
We never bother
to lock up the silver.
Even our bed
will not stay put.
The sheets play ghost,
the pillows fight,
the quilt unravels
when we’re not looking.
Unruly linens.
We drift too, open
to pale moons, watching
sprinklers undone,
water’s breath seeping
slowly from grass.
We laugh at lawns.
Not tied to one spot of green,
we circle through seasons
never touching
ground. |
On Comprehending Gravity
He holds that note,
his mouth a perfect
o of understanding:
song of the science
of dropping, ode to the cup,
falling again, again, again,
each time, picked up,
returned. His hand holds,
then drops, and no words
will stop this great force.
If G is Newton’s constant,
M mass of the earth,
r the distance to the center,
still, no equation can measure
this constant acceleration:
the cup, the ball, falling
forever in this moment.
No words can capture
the second of impact,
force of gravity, refrain
of fall, only that one
low note, as this boy,
my small scientist, tests
the world’s physics.
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