Rick Campbell     Alligator Point      (LD)
A Thousand Miles from Della Rose


When little I remember survives
this life will at last be mine.
As I stand in the valley, I know now
I’ll have to tell you of our loss.
Your grandmother, the Rose of your name,
is gone. This valley that made me has gone
to another life. The dark cold mills, singing
of our lost gods and their slaughter block of dreams,
line the river like pallbearers. You’ll think
I made too much of this, and I’ll tell you all too often
of things you’ll never see--forge, foundry,
furnace, the black smoke and slag.
Your land is loblolly and magnolia.
No coal barges crawl through your dreams.
We trade steel for flowers.
You are my new river.
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