One Man's Dark. Maurice Manning

      from the big butternut log across

      the gully wash below the house

      in the middle step of the hillside where

      my grandmother lived. Each end of the log

      was tucked into a stone cradle

      and someone had taken an adze and dressed

      the top to make it flat enough

      for her to walk across without

      a rail or a rope. Cold mornings

      she crossed the log on her long, dark way

      down to the road to meet my aunt

      or, later, the Stivers man, who drove her

      to the old tipple where she worked

      recording the numbers in ledger books

      as the coal came down in trucks and away

      again by rail or other trucks.

      The snow would not stay white for long;

      the world was turning inside out

      in 1974, and little

      by little, a kind of slow forgetting

      was happening and something I loved

      that would never stop filling my heart

      was slowly going away for good.

      I’ve kicked the butt-end of that log

      in my sleep to wake the snake stretched out

      along it. Gollie was the name

      she called my aunt — the Stivers man,