Where Papaw Walked
A Memory in the Hills
I walk the old path along the ridge
where my papaw once walked.
🌿
I came here first as a child, small enough
that the hill felt wide and the climb long.
My papaw moved ahead of me then, slow and steady,
pausing sometimes to look across the far hills.
I remember little now,
his voice, the way he stood a while in one place,
as if the land held something worth studying.
🌿
I did not know then how brief those days would be.
When I was five years old my papaw died,
and the mountain seemed larger after that,
the years moving on while memory stayed small,
a few moments scattered along the mind’s path.
🌿
Still, I return to this ridge sometimes
and think of him walking this ground long before me,
his life given to these hills.
And it seems to me that memory settles into the land
and waits for those who come searching.
🌿
Now when evening spreads across the ridges
I stand a while, and feel my papaw here again
in the enduring life of this place,
and my heart grows calm in that knowing.
About the Creator
Tim Carmichael
I am an Appalachian poet and cookbook author. I write about rural life, family, and the places I grew up around. My poetry and essays have appeared in Beautiful and Brutal Things, My latest book. Check it out on Amazon
Keep reading
More stories from Tim Carmichael and writers in Poets and other communities.
Pandora’s Burden
“My brother warned me to not accept gifts from the one who commissioned you,” said Epimetheus to the woman clad in silvery raiments standing at the entrance to the temple. Her silver tiara and the silver rings on her fingers and toes glinted in the firelight cast by torches set on either side of the doorway. Lingering in the shadows, beyond the reach of the flames as she was, he could not tell what she held in her hands. At first what appeared to be a box was perhaps a funerary urn, or maybe merely an apple.
By J. Otis Haas3 days ago in Fiction
Comments (1)
Gorgeously-penned! Much love to you & Papaw! 💕