A Poem about Bat Cave, North Carolina

A fictional poem that was inspired by my childhood. Bat Cave is a small, small town in the mountains of North Carolina, lovely people and scenery, and I wish I could spend more time there.

I remember chasing foxes

Up the hills, away from home,

Through the creeks and underbrush,

Till lost alone, I came upon

That knife-blade cliff overlooking the valley

Where a thrush nest was perched below me,

Further down I see my home,

My Ma and Pa and Jim the dog

Bawling about at their ankles,

The gardens all around them,

The airy scent of clean linens on the clothesline

Drifting all the way up to my childish nose

These days the fox chases me home

I fear what I might find there,

A paint-chipped house with sundered shudders,

The narrow beds of Ma and Pa

The daffodils and lilacs gone,

Withered into deathly stalks

The smell of fresh blueberry pie replaced

With the pungent odor

Of a carpet of fungus in the unkempt soil.

I turn from the wreckage caused by my fox-chase

Of leaving my home and family behind,

And see the fox standing alone at the shattered gate

Reminding me of my shame at having quarried him.