V E R S E and I M A G E

Tucked in each pew’s back pocket,

hymnals simmered in mote-light

until Sundays when the soiled

rough hands of farmers lifted

those songbibles, pages spread

like white wings being set free,

but what rose was one voice

woven from many, and heard

by Jason Storey who stood

in a field half an acre

of gravestones away, mute as

a fence post while neighbors sang

inside the church doors he swore

never to pass through after

wife and son died in childbirth,

that long-ago Christmas when

three days of snow made the road

to Blowing Rock disappear,

the doctor brought on horseback

arriving too late. Decades

Jason Storey would remain

true to his word, yet was there

in that field come rain or cold,

but came no closer, between

church and field two marble stones,

angel-winged, impassible

from Poems, New and Selected, HarperCollins, New York NY; © 2016

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Come look, my grandmother said,

bit and bright, and when I asked

where the old skin was she laughed

Later than night when I waked,

looked out the window, I found

moonglow draped on the barn roof

like clothes on a line, and wished

for a tall ladder to lean

against the wood slats and raise

a finger, brush the cool skin

that had once been cloaked with stars

from Poems, New and Selected, HarperCollins, New York NY; © 2016

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Stay on the four-lane until

mountains sigh, make a valley

where off-ramps wait, only then

find that other way home, one

easy to miss (there’s no sign).

Houses you pass are like beads

strung between trees and pasture,

most dark except some bare bulbs

blooming back porches yellow,

but what opens the heart’s need

wide as this night are the rooms

lit as if someone waits up

to give direction should you

lose your way on this bypass

back to your knowable life.

from Poems, New and Selected, HarperCollins, New York NY; © 2016

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Although I wouldn’t mind if the world got the impression that I pretty much have things figured out, I have to admit there are plenty of times I question whether I’m headed in the right direction. Not just how to get there, but even where to try to end up. Ron Rash’s poetry calms me down. Oh, there are no glaring road signs, just like there aren’t for most of the friends and family that inhabit his stories, but that’s exactly the point. We are all of us on this journey and none of us have all the answers. Where is my home, and how do I find it? How do I bring all these people I love along with me? Reading Ron Rash, I feel better about having all these questions.

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Ron Rash grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. He teaches at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC, and will be the keynote speaker and instructor at the fourth annual Tremont Writers Conference (Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, October 2026). His bestselling novels, short stories, and poetry have won many awards, including twice the O. Henry Prize.

Read three earlier poems by Ron Rash in the first part of this Verse and Image selection from his New and Selected here:

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