LESLIE ANNE GREGORY
Argus 1985
If I could give to you these hills
on a silver platter
John the Baptist style as you have grown
accustomed
I would gladly do it
If I could make you understand that part of these
damn piney woods
Is me
That part of me is their beauty
Perhaps you would begin to understand
These skies you think duller than those you call
your own
Trees you find all the same to eyeball
Red dirt that you find too horrible to seed with
yourself
Grassy knobbed land you cannot bear to drive
Are mine
Only to you do these hills sleep
If I could open you to them
To needles against rose-ocre horizonless sunsets
Water-flows as red as the banks they wash
Rising and falling scapes whose turns breath-
lessly roll
If I could show you how to become one with
Land so wanting of you
I would gladly do it.
