Cursed is the Ground

by Carson Colenbaugh

Little blanched bones lie at our feet in neat shambles,

tidied in a row succinct as if still held

by tendons and muscle: “Probably a rat snake

dropped by a clumsy hawk, see how all the vertebrae

are still aligned? Only the flesh has been disturbed.”

No sign of the skull, either snagged by a wild dog,

collectors’ quick fingers, or lost down the hill

to the creek, which trickles into serpentine remnants,

flowing relics leftover from holy bodies who

slithered before the dams were built: fragments of river

now cursed to wriggle in splintered chunks of their first

immaculate selves, to squirm through mud and not stride

as they once did, sprinting on potable feet

across wide prairies down to the sea’s stable edge.

The Seneca River fell to the lake, the final

length of the Keowee River is tucked below

Oconee Nuclear Station. The rocks that dislodge

from their banks are bleach-white, their fish are fat with petrol,

their hillsides are dense with intolerable coverage.

Nothing like when Bartram described this valley “rising

boldly” above an “expansive lawn.” No ground “covered

with habitation...cultivated and planted,”

or serene river meandering, “gently flowing...

but more frequently agitated, gliding swiftly

between...fruitful strawberry banks.” Now a different

spectacle: bush-clover, bobbers, thick blackberries,

their fruits hot and terribly sour, and, come August,

the apples I’m told are no good for eating.

Sumter National Forest, South Carolina