Gulf Fritillaries, Allatoona Creek
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things...
—Gerard Manley Hopkins
As we drove to this place, we noticed
more than one church sign that spoke of Satan.
NRA decals mocked a dead young man,
beckoned us to Stand and Fight.
A Confederate battle flag beat in wind
rushing a suburban lawn where political signs
for a man who has linked the president to Hitler
proclaimed allegiance from clipped grass.
All this and every imaginable chain
asserted their names on this corridor
now split by 41, once by exile and war.
Whether this world is charged,
whether this is its time of flaming out,
are questions we cannot afford to ask here,
walking these trails through a county park,
ducking spider webs, tangles of muscadine,
stepping over logs and mud puddles,
watching our children wade, splash,
throw rocks in Allatoona Creek
where it runs along a sewer line.
In the clay sand, coyote scat marks this place
unknowable to us, not our own or anyone’s,
draws a gathering of butterflies:
gulf fritillaries, alighting on excrement,
flaring flame wings in midmorning,
sucking the marrow of the waste,
consuming such redemption
as I have missed.
Conversion at Owl Creek
Last I was here, there was no blood:
only a sign, weathered and white.
Now, on our way to Brasstown Bald,
where Owl Creek Road pierces the wilderness,
I see the wood splattered red, color concealing
many letters, its message the same:
The blood of Jesus Christ
covers all sin.
Whether the work of evangelists or vandals,
I cannot say, but park beneath a white pine,
step to the sign, and, like Thomas, touch
the wound of paint, surprised to find it fresh.
Stooping among ferns, I set my hands in water,
wash the crimson in the creek, watch it distill
as it floats downstream, wait for it to disappear.
Christopher Martin is author of three poetry chapbooks: Marcescence: Poems from Gahneesah (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming, co-authored with David King); Everything Turns Away: Poems from Acworth and the Allatoonas (La Vita Poetica Press, forthcoming); and A Conference of Birds (New Native Press, 2012). His work has appeared in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia (Texas Review Press, 2012), Shambhala Sun, Waccamaw, Ruminate Magazine, Thrush Poetry Journal, Still: The Journal, Buddhist Poetry Review, Town Creek Poetry, and elsewhere. The editor of Flycatcher, a contributing editor at New Southerner, and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Chris lives with his wife and their two young children in northwest Georgia, between the Allatoona Range and Kennesaw Mountain. You can find him online at www.christopher-martin.net.