“Oldtown, Tennessee”

By: William Rieppe Moore

-after George Scarbrough’s “Blue Iris”

Sorry as a suckegg dog and hot

with the possibility of fraud, I was

light as an empty bank note and

full as a college idea;

that’s when I saw the shootin’ star

break trail—uncertain if it

spent the light of the last quarter moon

or just multiplied the darkness

to another power. Elevated

to the height of the cuttin’ room

just off the barn floor—untouched

by rain for ninety somethin’ years

where the grain is stored—I move

easy as wind in squirrelpaw leaves,

for it is spring and the rains come

over the mountains and over

the creek the midges have hatched

swarmin’ over the water.

---

William Rieppe Moore is from Richland County, South Carolina and moved to Unicoi County, Tennessee with his wife. He teaches high school English and earned an MA in English from ETSU. His poetry received a Pushcart Prize nom-ination from American Diversity Report, finalist honors in Driftwood’s In-House Poem Contest, and appears in James Dickey Review, Still: The Journal, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, and Terrain.org.