The Ascent

Some thought she had slipped, the plank
glazed slick with ice, or maybe
already cold beyond care,
drowsy and weary, bare feet
tempting a creekbed’s promise
of sleep, though she struggled out,
her trail a handprint of stars
rising toward a dazzle of white
where sun and snow met. They found
her homespun dress, underclothes,
before they found her, her eyes
open as the sky, as cold,
as far away. Her father
climbed the nearest tree, brought down
green sprigs, berries bright as blood,
weaved a garland for her brow,
and that was how they left her,
wearing a crown, unburied,
knowing they’d never hunt here
or build a cabin where she
undressed, left their world as death
closed around her like a room
and she lay dying on the snow,
a bride awaiting her groom.

from Among the Believers
(Iris Press)
© 2000 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.