Whippoorwill

The night Silas Broughton died
neighbors at his bedside heard
a dirge rising from high limbs
in the nearby woods, and thought
come dawn the whippoorwill’s song
would end, one life given wing
requiem enough — were wrong,
for still it called as dusk filled
Lost Cove again and Bill Cole
answered, caught in his field, mouth
open as though to reply,
so men gathered, brought with them
flintlocks and lanterns, then walked
into those woods, searching for
death’s composer, and returned
at first light, their faces lined
with sudden furrows as though
ten years had drained from their lives
in a mere night, and not one
would say what was seen or heard,
or why each wore a feather
pressed to the pulse of his wrist.

from Raising the Dead
(Iris Press)
© 2002 by Ron Rash
Used by permission of the author.

Ron Rash was born and raised in North Carolina, in the southern Appalachians, where his family has lived for over 250 years. Rash holds degrees from Gardner-Webb College and Clemson University, and he now lives in Clemson, South Carolina, where he teaches English at Tri-County Technical College and is a member of the MFA faculty at Queens College in Charlotte, North Carolina. Rash has won a General Electric Young Writers Award, an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and has been awarded the Sherwood Anderson Prize. His poetry and prose have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, Yale Review, Georgia Review, Oxford American, New England Review, Southern Review, and Shenandoah. He has published three books of poems, two books of stories, and has a novel forthcoming in the fall.