Alex Martin - Echoes in the Jamison Gap

7. Echoes in the Jamison Gap

I used to go deeper into the mountain
to cut wood above the Price graves.

I remember the sharp thud on the opposite ridge
from the Luster Field, where the Lightfoot cabin was,

as if someone were there, working beside me,
driving an axe into a dead log,

as if no one were there, no one else.

I’d clap my hands, and listen

to the stillness, and emptiness, of the mountain,
and to the echo

which scored the stillness.

for it was the sound of stillness,
as the stillness was of absence.


absence of the hootowl and the screechowl,
woodpecker and woodthrush,
wildcat and bobcat,
panther and whippoorwill.
And Philo said:

memory of Lou Brown—
nobody knowed where she come from, or why she come there—

of Rube Woods, her murderer,

of Ellen Walden who built up fires,
and slept by the road (with her 36 Colt)

of eight black brothers, poisoned, and buried in a common grave,
where a poplar’d blowed o’er,

of one brother, who was sick and hadn’t eaten,
who went and hanged himself out by the Tin Bridge

of Romy, bee man from Naples,
calligrapher, grafter of fruit trees,

of Private Riffey, who shot Stonewall (or so he believed),
he hoed corn, reflected

of Laurie Welborne, the mayor’s daughter
(who hoed corn also, and took in washing),

of Laurie’s daughter, Clio Lightfoot, flower of the mountain,

and of the Lightfoots, of the Lightfoot holler.


I used to go deeper into the mountain
to cut wood above the Price graves.