Since Samhain is the season wherein the words are thin, the ancestors spirits walk alongside ours, I thought this was a fitting time to share this very old piece I wrote about my home along the Allegheny river.
I Am
Allegheny
Melanie Karsak
The Allegheny is the blood in my
veins. Silvery water snakes along bends
and narrows, feeding my ever-beating heart, an island in the river’s deepest regions. But piercing eyes will stab this silver sheen
and find the secret tale below. The
water is murky brown. Loamy substances
drift feathery just under the obsidian surface.
In its deepest regions it is green and dotted with sinkholes that embrace
and do not let go. Mayflies dance over the surface leaving white bubbles
behind. Wide-mouths leap from below, snapping
then retreating once more into the depths.
Slanting sun peeks through cattails at the water’s edge to reveal an
opalescent treasure trove: clam shells dot the river bottom. Their jewels grace my earlobes and neck. The sound of my blood is silent save the
whirl of the fisherman’s reel sending out its cast. The bobber breaks the surface with a deep
‘glumb’ hinting at my depths.
My
shape is defined by the river banks, rounded foot-hills, my breasts, which curve
toward the shadowed glen. Hidden glades
hide mushroomed faerie rings, and ferns secret-away the mysteries of life
within their folds. The leafy canopy,
highlighted by bright sunlight, is my hair.
The wind rolls unobstructed over corn-fields until it meets the tree-line,
tangling Ash and Oak, Willow and Pine. They
moan when the forest is most silent.
Below,
my body, the earthen floor, effervesces with the smell of decaying leaves. Limestone adds a gritty surface. Beds of pink Pine needles lend a softness
that is easy to touch. Sharp and
brittle, Pine cones are my nails and teeth.
My
soul is in the wind. It is the shrill
cry of the hawk overhead, the alarmed snort of the white-tailed deer and its
retreating hoof-beats, and the sound of the mountain borne tributaries, thick
with minnows and salamanders, rolling over fossil rocks toward the river—the
bay—the ocean.
I
am Allegheny a: river, mountains, forest.
Green. Origin.
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