Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.
—General “Stonewall” Jackson
There’s a parable in there somewhere,
how we went the wrong way on the right road
and ended up in Tennessee.
Crossing over should be that easy,
headlong into death, like going the wrong way
on the right road into Tennessee.
Kimberly L. Becker was born in Augusta, Georgia and raised in North Carolina, where she attended UNC-Chapel Hill and studied poetry writing with William Harmon and James Seay. Although she has lived in the Washington, DC area for several years, she still makes pilgrimages home to what was once her grandparents’ farm in the mountains of NC so that her son can see where his people are from and get to know and love the land that will one day be his.