I don’t know how many American mountains
are dead or frozen or sleeping Indian maidens
waiting, waiting, but I’ve lived below three—
Bear Mountain first, collapsed in prone pathos
over my parents’ house. Perhaps that is why
my father, in his madness, set off across her neck
with my mother’s handgun (a gift from her father),
carrying his muddied mind thirty miles to a sheriff’s
substation, arriving on bloodied feet and handing
them the gun while confessing the murder
of my mother.
He sat in jail
and I sat in school
as a deputy stopped by our house to inform Mom
of her murder. Thirty years later, I must say
she took it well.
The maiden still sleeps
on their stoop, waiting for someone, anyone,
to ring her doorbell to see if she’s okay.
Theric Jepson has lived in small towns and big cities, and has witnessed raw nature in both, making him a firm believer in speaking with the crows. His writings at the intersection of environment and religion have been published in Wilderness Interface Zone, Psaltery & Lyre, Califragile, and are forthcoming in Blossom as the Cliffrose (Torrey House Press, 2021). For more, follow Theric on Twitter @thmazing.
