BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS, VIRGINIA
We saw humpbacks breach from cliffs
of Machalilla and chased sea turtles through reefs
off Isla de la Plata. Take your daughter here,
I told a friend, while it still is what it is.
Yes, he said, and then he didn’t. Years later
Alba climbs an outcrop and I warn of copperheads
and try to remember the word orogenesis:
a boundary of convergence and compression
or: how mountains are made. Of all my fears
I tend to trust these views. From here only an expert
might tell oak from ash and no one can spot
the endangered salamander. But children see better
the things right in front of them—the cocoon
emptied, the fleck of plastic, shadows on
the breakfast wall. No one wants to hear
that walking in a straight line leads to where
they’re going. Conference halls of ministers
clapping themselves on the backs. Did you know—
Appalachia was once the center of the world?
I stepped into the evidence outside a cave mouth
in Highland County. We like to believe
our patterns are permanent, even as we see
the progress of loss each morning at the mirror.
You stick your finger inside the emptied shell
of a Paleozoic sea and pick loose the proof
of time. With every rain the mantle thins
and deposits: one step closer to being reset,
a degree or two further into nothingness.
Shenandoah National Park, Virginia
Andrew Payton graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University in 2014. His poetry has been published in The Journal, Third Coast, Poet Lore, Mid-American Review, Rattle, and elsewhere, and won the James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review. He works as a learning designer and climate advocate and lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia with his partner and children.
Banner image courtesy Andrew Payton.
