Recovering at Crabtree Falls

Because my love of something I cannot name
has become my affliction—real as broken ribs,
as a missing limb—we drive by reservation casinos
glowing at night like war camps in the mountain valley,
ignore the rubber tomahawk crowd at Chimney Rock—
and instead stretch our legs where we walk down
in the earth to remember an eden.

Whether we believe it has been covered up
by layer upon layer of human need—
like cities built on top of conquered cities—
or didn’t listen well enough to grandparents’ stories
of a world that remained about the same
from the time they were born until the time they died—
this is a place to live in the moment—
like my Cherokee ancestors who had no word
for yesterday or tomorrow.

If only this place would let us shed our worn-out bodies,
descend into the gorge and stand purely spirit
by the river, help us accept that once inside a laurel hell
we can lose all sense of direction
without losing a sense of who we are,
delight in the carried sound of rushing water
without worrying we are nowhere near our destination,
slow down enough to find the best awkward footing
on stones and roots without wondering
why we are even going.

Aren’t we all just wounded animals needing
the sanctuary of healing mountain waters?
I found out the hard way that the steepest
descending path can always be steeper.

One time I saw a blind couple dressed for church
being led down the river gorge before Easter sunrise,
another time I saw a family clustered around
its young soldier home from war on one leg—
still awkward on his crutches—
but for every four hundred people I’ve ever met on this path,
I’ve heard sixteen will lose one or more toes,
five will lose one or more fingers, two will lose an arm
or a leg, one will lose even his head—
and lucky me—I had only to break a few ribs,
shed a couple of pounds of skin like a snake sloughing
last season’s self across a chestnut log.

Hearing in the roar of the falls a voice like my own—
yelling out my own dumb luck to have made it—
I want to cast an Elwood Perry spoonplug, watch the light
on its silver face as it arcs into the plunge pool,
or break the surface in the deep dive of my vicodin
and lie down in the river bed among forty rainbow trout.