Echoes in Allegheny Woods

by Erik Van Aken

Seven, and dreaming alone,

in the house where I grew up,

without you.

Like when my father,

night approaching, would enter,

in a cheap, grey suit,

a case in hand, fingers reaching

for something beyond me.

Small hands grasping his leg,

even with eyes closed,

I felt light. Once,

he let me help

fell my favorite tree in the backyard.

It crashed through the neighbor’s fence, and

his strong arm around my shoulder

kept me from running away.

No particular shape or tone,

no sound, only the trace of a blank contour,

the warmth, like stepping into a quiet church—

though I was afraid.

Grey stone walls, eclipsed by green mosses

and lichens, blessed in ways

I couldn’t perceive.

Holiness, I imagined,

grows and blossoms within us,

and her, too.

Quickened by a scream at 4 a.m.,

I believed it was tolerable,

that fungi would flower into shades

of orange and gold—the kingdom of heaven,

far more than contours breaking in,

far from the line in Mark

where my trembling hands never reached.

Still, in the taut, awkward silence,

I imagined again

we could start over,

that grey stones placed

in unfamiliar ground

might awaken back to life.

Like those my grandfather laid

over his Shepherd in Allegheny Woods,

where we walked the old train tracks.

He told me of the time

he and his brothers found coal

to warm their hands,

or heat a single can of soup.

And we, you and I, all of us,

might see these old bones arch back to life,

hear them speak from afar,

a place far greater,

a new song, the one we’ve always known,

yet I have never heard

anything quite so beautiful.

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Erik Van Aken has published articles in Theoria and Aeon. He currently teaches philosophy at Sevenoaks School in Kent, UK.