Photographic artwork by Kris Saknussemm
view from the valley floor
settled by the pennsylvania-dutch, of unburnished stock,
deep furrows in henna made the going slow.
cresting the gap at rockfish, moist and gleaming eyes took in a blessed hand in evidence,
her air of apple sweetness.
they peopled edges, of pavonine headwaters of the potomac,
their furtive nibbling at the awaiting cardinal soil.
that red clay, moldable, a landscape's birthmark,
a region's benediction.
she was not the preferred black, an ebony banquet for willows,
gathering to drink along the soft edge of the shenandoah.
she was a ruddy soil, rubescent.
through her they built handsome brick buildings, sturdy, enough,
a place to grow up.
i have left this land of apples, willows,
three blue spruces from christmas mornings past, of mosses.
"i remember a storm broke out in arkansas."
to another land, where the ashen grasses, parched, in the vastness of delicate balance,
crunches under every pointed footstep.
here, the clay in my blood, in the brick of me, receives a daily polishing,
one day a hand-held mirror.
