One summer morning when
the sky is blue and deep
as the middle of the lake,
rent a boat and shadow
Jocassee’s western shoreline
until you reach the cove that
once was the Horsepasture River.
Now bow your head and soon
you’ll see as through a mirror
not a river but a road
flowing underneath you.
Follow that road into
the deeper water where
you’ll pass a family graveyard,
then a house and barn.
All that’s changed is time,
so cut the motor and drift
back sixty years and remember
a woman who lived in that house,
remember an August morning
as she walks from the barn,
the milking done, a woman
singing only to herself,
no children yet, her husband
distant in the field.
Suddenly she shivers,
something dark has come
over her although
no cloud shades the sun.
She’s no longer singing.
She believes someone
has crossed her grave, although
she will go to her grave,
a grave you’ve just passed over,
wondering why she looked up.
Under Jocassee
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