Augusta to Augusta among the Rocks and Escarpments
Why Augusta? Why so?
Because we moved there, some nine years ago.
Nine years come, nine years go,
Not quite ten, close enough to know.
A decade will pass.
We lived on a smaller cul-de-sac called Wicker, not much more than a mile away.
Wicker, like the baskets or reeds of interwoven craftsmanship
Underwater or above, as the jokes go.
Suburban living is no joke, no fancy riddle
Between the urban and the boonies,
The urbane and the hayseeds
Thus we live betwixt and between
The ghettos and the hollers, the high rises and the prairies and mountain valleys
Suburbia and its detritus, is we (are us).
We moved to a bigger home, closer to the high school, separated by
Augusta. Road. Traversed by the stream, or rather partially dried creek
Which meanders by our back yard area, with little rocks and stones.
She left later that summer for a county called Rockingham,
But attended school in Augusta County, south of there, down the road
Hence, Augusta to Augusta.
August means great, or reverend, or some culminating thing of veneration.
We were in the august time of the years of her childhood.
She parted, between the rocks, which were Rockingham and Rockridge counties, to the north and the south.
Rockridge, below, in the not totally august Shenandoah Valley, where Buena Vista,
as the locals butcher its pronunciation, is located.
She and her sister went there, for some church social and activity says those of the youth...
Southern Virginia University, just a generation old
Within the culture of whom we have been bred and raised
Based on tablets hidden for centuries and other such lore,
Of Israelites and their tribes and destinies and outcomes beyond the
Empirical, scientific, quantifiable and known.
Running throughout Utah and the greater Inter-Mountain West
And now this rock that we inhabit, the third from the sun.
Rocks and escarpments, crags and crevices,
Stones and steeples made from caverns and cliffs and endless
Rolling valleys, mountain chains, oceanic templates of tectonic masses,
Frozen tundras and huge, vast airs of expanses through all the spheres of the
Earth's layers on up into the zero gravity of space,
To the moon and beyond.
That dead, mostly dead, lifeless, mostly lifeless, chunk of rock the width of Australia,
Circling us, the bigger chunk of rock below, with our alleged iron core,
And its heavy, and rather portentous, gravity.
Rocks and stones are heavy, huge and massive. They become mountains,
like the Appalachians, where she
Began to explore.
Climbing.
Perusing,
Pursuing.
Thinking. Dreaming. Running, but more hiking, traipsing.
Among the rocks and escarpments.
From Augusta to Augusta
From the Blue Ridge college, to the colored, or "red" bigger mountains
Centrally orientated
In a place called North America.
August, weathered, snow capped, unconquered.
Some ski their slopes, thinking they have mastered something
in nature, they have tempted and overcome the gravity
Our massive orbital rock.
We are just novices and neophytes here, just pilgrims and sojourners.
Climbing, weaving, grasping, dancing, hiking, hepting,
Huffing and puffing,
From Augusta to Augusta,
And nine years later, to the red rocks, the colored mountains
The crags and peaks and pikes of the giant towers reaching the heavens,
The ice and snows and rivulets that derive into bigger channels and flows and oceans across and beneath.
Among the rocks and escarpments.
Where we find ourselves now.
