By Stephen M. Holt
Editor's note: This poem won the James Still Award as the best poem submitted to the Appalachian Writer's Association Contest in 2002. It refers to a school bus wreck in Floyd County, Kentucky, which occurred when the bus slid into the flood-swollen waters of Cow Creek, a tributary of the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River. Twenty-seven people were killed.
It's a narrow country: deep waters,
Crooked roadbeds, where night
Runs black as a coal seam, shrouds
Rainy ravines and children are dreams
Foregone with the slide of a yellow bus
In the fast brown froth of Levisa Fork.
Cries snagged like debris
On hemlock and willow,
Rode the rough circuit of mountains,
Breached gaps, settled under rocks
Like songs sung for mining men
Cranked down dripping shafts
Of a morning, never to rise at night,
Or the fishermen of Connemara
And their ponies, washed up by great
Surf under wild western skies.
O! For another darkness
They sing.