A
train whistle blows through the hollows as we cross a
ridge above the river. Here
the Mississippi shoulders two seemingly different countries
as it divides the high, steep bluffs near Cape Girardeau,
Missouri, from the low floodplains of southern Illinois.
The rivers sheer immensity dominates the view, a
shimmering blue giant with footprints the size of states.
The surrounding winter forest on the Missouri side is
a mirror image of Appalachia with its oaks, tulip poplars,
and beech. Enormous vines spiral up the trunks of the
tallest trees. Bursting out of the loess perhaps lifetimes
ago, these frozen anacondas have turned to the color of
burnt stone.
feeling
it in the teeth
a long cold drink
of lengthening shadow
|
American
beech leaves flicker amid the cold, sunlit spaces. Pale
and brittle, they tremble with the slightest breeze, restive
guardians of the drowsy forest. With the look and feel
of old paper, they are the parchment on which the treaties
and hardships of the southeastern tribes would be written
as the Choctaw, Chicasaw, Cherokee, Seminole, and Creek
nations were marched through these hills in the winter
of 1838.
Eclipsing
all living memory, each haunted stone guards its share
of an unwieldy truth that like a breath leaving the body,
is all that remains. Between icy gusts of wind rising
off the river, our retreating footsteps make the only
sounds.