Uncertain Season in
High Country
by Robert Penn Warren

A Hundred Wild Geese
by Carol Ann Davis

Fires
by John Lee

Consenting to Love: Autobiographical Roots
of O’Connor’s “Good
Country People”
by Mark Bosco

Uncertain Season in High Country
    Robert Penn Warren

By the descending mountain track, soundless
At damp impact of foot, a few
Pine-tops tall enough to lift
Into the hover of mist, I came. Horizon,
Encircling the clotted gray dubiety of light we call
The sky, has no definition in curdle
Of cloud and distance. But
You know what is there: bald heavings upward, bold
Peak, bottomless
Ravine. You
Have seen all, the lift
Of monstrous glitterings to
The flame of summer noonlight, depth
At noon dizzy in darkness.
But now, far, far, over what is not
Seen, thunder prowls,
Grumbles. This is the season of
Firmament’s, and heart’s,
Uncertainty.

Pines thin out, yonder a stump, track widens. Somebody
Must have been at some feeble attempt
At human life. That open area yonder
Must have been a mowing. Dimly,
Like last hope, the track skirts it.

In the middle of the mowing, the cow
Stands. What remains of a cow: udders
Shrunken, backbone sagging, hind quarters
Thin to hide-drape. The beast
Stands under a dying pine.
A tuft of gray grass, unmasticated, hangs from motionless jaw.

South of the beast, the log cabin staggers—
Or seems to stagger. Above mud-plastered rock chimney,
Smoke hovers. It wants to rise. Fails.
I do not stop. I know my fate.

Under a thick clump of larches, I sleep.
At dawn the first few raindrops of
The uncertain season,
Tentative. I manage
A fire. Coffee. A hard day and I’ll make it.

Thunder, uncertain,
Rambles the undefinable horizon.

I think of the cow, of the unmasticated snatch of grass.
I speculate on the weather.