Poetry

Billy Hathorn

By

Eaton Jackson

Appalachian Trail hiker Geraldine Largay survived for nearly a month after getting lost along the trail in Franklin County in July 2013, and documented her final days in a journal that was among the personal effects found by the Maine Warden Service when it recovered her remains more than two years later.

A Fading Pencil Line

one inch off the trail

slipping off         into the uncharted

no compass readings

no radio signals

no travelling –companion to

turn to and acknowledge the panic     being lost

birds flying by unconcerned

(a world of birds flying by but no good-Samaritan’s offer

of their toes to a message for help)

no bird to take me up in its beak, like their baby bird who fell during flight

and take me home

one inch off the trail,

a crumpled  map     a criss-cross of lines

entries are exits and exits are entries

one inch off the trail

life and death coexist

inanimate objects chosen by footsteps

on a taunt wire strung          across

a world of birds above         a silent maze

below

one inch off the trail

a mis-placing of footsteps on a line drawn by a 2H pencil

a fading line

one inch off the trail

looking into the solemn face of mortality

a flickering camp fire,

a quiet resignation to it

breathing in rhythm of the hazy flicker

of a dying flame.

The Price Fame

Between anonymity and fame

a chasm sits

no shape no form

waiting

slippery embankments,

looking up at the plateau’s open legs

an invitation a desire to fly high up there

to make it     to jump up  to jump over and be crowned

to play ball on the thinnest film of ice

to slam dunk out the basket’s elasticity.

deafening roar of a million-in-love-with you

waves washing over the hole in the ice

an existence immersed in champagne’s effervescence

just enough prana

to soar and touch the skies

to caress its face

 just enough prana to float around among galaxies

before the foreboding that floats also along with euphoria

before the free fall in silence

the burnt out glow

down the muddy ravine

fingers gripping blades of grass

fistful of breeze

sliding

Immortality like

birds dropping out of flight.

Eaton Jackson

My name is Eaton Jackson and I am a Jamaican, aspiring writer, living in the United States for the past four years. I have been writing from my teenage years. Over the years I have been published in various Jamaican publications. I have also been published in a few USA publications (Shot Glass, NewsVerse, Creative Unleashed, River Poets Journal). Despite the sense sometimes of a despairing sense of anonymity, writing on a blank piece of paper remains an instinctive reaction. So, the dream persists – to one day become a successful, published writer.