Daniel Roop
The Ridge, Scruggs County, Tennessee
They came from the city, out of state,
to buy the land in midwinter. The road
ended at the base, so they scaled the acreage on foot.
The trees stood leafless and gray, spiking
the slope, sentries on the ridge,
the bones of a landscape. They crunched
through dead leaves to the ridgetop view,
miles of woodland unspooling below, and snapped
a photo, trying to frame that wildness.
Later, home in the city again, preparing
for the move, they dreamed and leaned into
the photo like a portal, feeling its pull.
They returned in the spring, prepared to shape
the mountain, but on stepping out of the car, they
stood stunned at the green. No longer gray and bare,
leaves moved in the wind like curtains, underbrush
erupted and flowered, thick and hallucinogenic,
hiding their prior path. They took tools from the trunk,
price tags still affixed to shiny red handles, and tamped a path
up the mile-long walk to the top. They ventured apart, her
with long-handled clippers, he with a shovel,
and began to clear what they could. Every inch
was impossibly green, the air thick with gnats
and itself. It would be easy to get lost, though how does
one get lost in their own home? Eyes on the ground,
myopically digging at shallow roots, he did.
He realized at some point he had wandered
onto a downward slope. He recognized nothing.
He gripped the shovel with uncalloused hands,
listened to the thousand sounds he couldn’t name.
This would be where one meets the fae, he thought.
Magic and myth beneath each leaf. He stepped
on a log and it gave way beneath him, soft
with rot and termites, and he stumbled. Amidst
the unrecognizable sounds, he heard distant
barks and howls, decided it was time to head back.
He circled and wandered, the dogs ever more distant,
and he knew that, for once, he had dodged
the mundane. But now the slope felt steeper, the foliage
encroached, kudzu twined around his ankles. He tried
to tear free, the vines now at waist, now at throat, digging
into flesh, the world going from green to red
as he was dragged downhill. He tumbled and slid,
appalled at the lack of guardrails,
at how poorly equipped one could be for one’s own life.
_______________
Daniel Roop is a member of the Horror Writers Association and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his work in Will Work for Peace from Zeropanik Press. His speculative fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Flash Fiction Online, Dark Spores, Black Cat Tales, The Maul Magazine, and Appalachian Places. He is a seventh generation East Tennessean, and his favorite superhero is Kitty Pryde.
Author’s Notes and Backstory: The genesis of this poem is fairly straightforward. Years ago, my wife and I bought some hilly acreage in a small, isolated farming community. We bought it in winter, and I actually did manage to get briefly lost that spring the first time we worked on the land. That experience, combined with a long fascination with the Dunning-Kruger effect (“you don’t know what you don’t know”), and the growing realization every year of how little I know about how many things, led to this poem. I’m sure I also had echoes of “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” by James Wright floating through my head, as I often do. Wright’s last line, that lightning bolt that either undercuts or strengthens the entire poem, stays with me. This poem certainly doesn’t approach that masterful ambiguity; but the idea of a dissonant jolt of awareness in a seemingly idyllic place resonates with me.
Editor’s Comments and Image Citations: Since there are several Tennessee poets in this issue, I thought I’d mention that there is no Scruggs County. The author also said that Scruggs County is “a fictional place where I set much of my writing, inspired by various rural places I’ve lived in Tennessee.” (But there was a famous Tennessee resident and banjo player, Earl Scruggs (1924-2012), inducted into the Blue Grass Music Hall of Fame.). Image credit: Microsoft Designer prompted by “a solitary man in silhouette trudges up a steep slope to the ridgeline, the banks are heavily overgrown with kudzu. The kudzu attacks him from behind and he struggles to get away but fails.”