I.
The first book still smelled
of fresh glue and wet ink
when the second began whispering
Half the world asked for blurbs
while the new pages arrived barefoot
dragging rain through the kitchen
II.
I barely look up anymore
from the next dark little screen
with its urgent blue messages
Outside the old book waited
like a coat left on a chair
still warm with the scent from the body
Customers passed it by
looking for medals
bright stacks with famous names
Yet every closing shift
I found myself touching the spine
as though it might answer back
By morning only pages remained
stacked like burnt toast on good china
still warm from her hands
No launch
no chorus of borrowed names
just the dangerous weather of truth
Tonight I choose the lamp
the unwitnessed page
the long forest of ink
I no longer wish
to fold myself into envelopes
crossing polite desks
The orchard does not ask
for endorsements from rattlesnakes
before bearing fruit
I no longer wish
to outshout the highway
every passing wreck
already has spectators
I would rather carry
fresh water uphill
show young songwriters
where the forms are hidden
how to keep their names
attached to their own work
because the loudest room
is rarely the safest one
and every season
another artist disappears
beneath applause
beneath contracts
beneath the exhaustion
of becoming visible
I have no hunger now
to become more noise
I want to become
safe passage
beside the narrow places
so somebody else
makes it home intact
I stopped saying Appalachia
when one mountain answered
by its real name
Blue Ridge —
blue shale underfoot
hawk above the tree line
rain held in pine bark
I came to conquer it
and learned instead
where my breath returns
The wheelbarrow leans by the shed
still carrying traces of earth
her gloves folded like tired birds
beside the last unopened gate
The manuscript leaves in silence
no trumpet follows the crossing
the screen snaps shut
and one dog shifting in sleep
She thought completion would thunder
would split the rafters with light
instead the room simply widened
enough for breathing to return
Outside, the trees keep their counsel
Sweet bay magnolia buds whisper
and somewhere beyond her seeing
another pair of hands has opened the door
The manuscript is in
like bread slid gently from the hands
into the village oven
no longer kneaded at midnight
no more flour on the wrists
counting commas like rosary beads
the pages go now without me
wearing their Sunday shoes of ink
crossing the threshold alone
and somewhere
a bell neither loud nor sorrowful
begins to ring
I realized too late
the catalog had split its river twice —
one hand reaching for royalties
another already claiming the toll
So I took the albums down myself
Thirty days, the warning flashed,
after I was already in the water —
but the entry portal was already closing
Here? one platform still dark
Here? the ford —
transit blurred beneath the streaming
Here? I could not tell
I'll watch again tomorrow
I could not return the way I came
by then the debut was already sworn upon my hand
no safer going forward than turning back —
on the banks behind me
witnesses hands covering their mouths
no label
no manager
no coachmen waiting at the gate
only the crossing and whatever courage remained
Each morning I searched the banks —
one title clearing, then another
I read the patterns in the water
So I gambled on the crossing anyway
Again the cards fell
across the kitchen table
soft as tired rain
The Hermit returned
with his patient little lamp
I sighed at the sight
I wanted the Sun
some golden catastrophic
yes from the heavens
Instead, the same roads
the same waiting woman crossing
the same moonlit cup
Outside, nothing moved
except one moth tapping slow
against the porch screen
I shuffled once more
half prayer and half superstition
half boredom with time
As though fate might blink
grow embarrassed by my longing
and change its answer
Are poems meant
only to be folded like origami
inside private rooms?
Or, like orchard branches
holding their invisible
fruit before the bloom
In the Discord room
tiny lanterns blinked alive —
two hearts pressed the screen
I carried a guide
through the narrow Appalachian
corridor of doubt
No trumpet answered
only the blue typing dots
appearing, then gone
Still, somewhere nearby
the adjacent possible
shifted in its sleep
Like roots under frost
finding one another blind
through miles of dark earth
I have learned by now
some doors do not swing open
they warm on the hinge
The poems kept changing rooms
every time I thought
I had finally lit the house correctly
One door became three
one era folded into another
rain moved to a different window
Outside, the presses waited
like distant thunder over Tennessee
while I stood in the kitchen
counting syllables like rosary beads
A newborn manuscript breathes
warm as fresh bread at dawn
waiting beside the door
with my name in its hands
The sourwoods had begun loosening
their red signatures into the yard
each leaf a small surrender
the wind knew how to carry
For weeks I had lived by glowing windows
names flickering across midnight screens
voices from distant cities
crossing the dark like migrating geese
A warmth settled into the body afterward
the kind that comes
when the climb is over for now
and campfires appear along the ridge
The mornings cooled at last
I walked slower through the neighborhood
hands deep in my sleeves
breathing woodsmoke and thawed rain
Somewhere beyond the season’s turning
ballots drifted through invisible rooms
the trees releasing what they could
into the hands of weather
I had already heard
other wings in the distance
answering back
I gathered the scattered hours without scolding them
opened the document like reopening a garden gate
some things bent in the night wind
some things rooted deeper because of it
and the day, mercifully, began again
I kept moving commas like chairs in a flooded house
certain the water would rise exactly where I stood
each saved version breeding another shadow copy
each margin whispering,
you should have known sooner
Outside, the dogwood carried on without revision
white petals opening beside the parking lot curb
while I sat arguing with invisible architecture
trying to remember
whether the bridge was broken
or simply unfinished
