Five o'clock when we arrive, but there's time
to stand on a bluff overlooking the handsome
confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah,
several houses from the early 1800s,
quietly regarding us while a twilight
soft as down creeps in from all sides,
scent of chestnut leaf and flower expanding,
a distant plash of waters, and the whispered
sensation of backward-stretching time, remote
and deep as Appalachia. A brief promenade's
muffled footfalls resound with the gravity
lent to any earth where blood was once shed.
On to Virginia, a hotel booked within sight
of the Blue Ridge . After dinner in our top-floor room
a windowseat offers the best prospect of the moon
levitating over black foothills, night breezes
heavy with perfume from flowers on the silk tree
below - a favorite species of Mr. Jefferson's,
I recall reading somewhere. From the pint flask
that used to go everywhere with me I've poured
a double shot these ice-cubes will only halfway
cool down. Out over the lawn, fireflies bestir
themselves, rise, signal. An image floats up,
how five summers ago Ann and I caught them and turned
Mason jars into short-term., green-flickering lamps.
Would she remember that?
I'll
ask when we meet
next month. But wait, what was -
?
A bright strobe
wide as the sky switches on, sheet-lightning playing
back and forth to the roll of monumental drums, and then
ballg,
another crackling flashbulb, the air charged
with electric prickles. Walter comes over, lounges
next to me and shares the light show. \Vhen
I turn, there's that serious-edged smile of his,
solemn eyes that seem to see everything. To break
the silence I ask, "Ever hear that old song,
Oh,
Shellalldoah?"
I sing a few notes, a few wordless notes.
*
