we cook and cook

the gathering of the clan

we leave the West

where water is bountiful

only because the summer remembers 

winter’s gift of snow,

out where the air is so dry

that sweat works to cool,

and my nose hates the parching,

we come up to the Smokies

through the rain and with the rain,

and these woods remember themselves as rainforest:

all green and lush, with fungus happily everywhere,

the streams exuberantly full,

and they stay loud and rushing white for days,

usually, when I first get up here,

I have accumulated pressures within

that have to empty into poems, into photos,

this trip, instead, I cook and cook,

so that we can remember summer’s bounty

in applesauce and all the fixings 

for our social event of the year,

the gathering of our eclectic clan 

for the hike up Mt. LeConte,

and in a bit over two weeks 

our children, spouses, and grandchildren

will start to wend their way up here 

so that what has been, and will be, asunder,

is whole again for a time.

by Henry H. Walker

July 10, ’13