For two weeks, blocked by mountains
from television and radio, far from town,
far from friends, far from home,
more removed from my world than I had ever been
near Pound, Virginia, on Grandma’s porch
high off the ground, a stranded refugee
on weathered planks of 100-year-old wood.
That summer, I’d kill time
between a sun-bleached rocker,
a matching slatted chair
with broad worn arms
and a paint-chipped green swing.
I’d wait out the hours on that swing
reread lines from dogeared romances
or sulk in the wooden rocker and stare
toward the road near Phillips Creek,
where the coal trucks rumbled,
tossing smoggy clouds of dust
that reigned in the air long after the sound
of their rattling faded.
When it rained hard, I’d huddle in the chair
pull my legs up against the mist, grieve
as the water mourned over eaves, endure the slap
sound on the beaten earth below
as the distant creek pounded
its way out of the holler leaving me behind
to watch minutes crawl as the swing cracked and groaned
keeping pace like a slow metronome,
back and forth, back and forth,
back and forth
East Tennessee writer Natalie Kimbell‘s work includes not only poetry but also non-fiction and playwriting. Her writing appears in many journals and anthologies, including Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Mildred Haun Review, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Tennessee Voices, and Artemis. She has two chapbooks, On Phillips Creek (2024), And the Weather Remains the Same (2025), both published by Finishing Line Press.
Click below to find more of Natalie Kimbell’s amazing poetry.
This gallery is not published.
**Featured image credit: Елизавета Ливертовская [Elizabeth Li] from Pixabay, cropped