The second day of October.
Thickets of Carolina Wrens
Singing the song called Home.
The mountain towns paved
With floodwash, heaps of silt,
Deathly mass of wayward trees.
Red maple, Yellow poplar.
Those remaining will pennant
The air in time for the funerals.
The Carolina Wren is small-bodied
And big-voiced. The Carolina Wren is
June Carter singing Wildwood Flower
Ginger lily, goldenrod, and aster.
Red chainsaws, yellow backhoes.
Brown water. Everything is brown water.
A safety-vest-orange maple leaf
On a dark casket is an easy image,
But that makes it no less real.
The Carolina Wren is a plain thing.
Unadorned, like this writing,
But overspilling with living.
Where is a town when it has
Been washed downstream?
It is in the people sharing meals.
Cool in the mornings,
Cool in the nights.
Wrens sing the song called Home.
Clay Steakley is a writer, musician, filmmaker, and theatre artist. His work has been published alongside Aimee Bender’s and Lauren Groff’s in Slake, as well as in Cathexis Northwest Press, Fiction Fix, From the Depths, and Waxing & Waning. He was a finalist for a PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship, and received the Ruby P. Treadway award for creative writing. He was a 2020/21 OZ Arts Art/Porch Art Wire Fellow. Clay's current project is The Fire Cycle, a multidisciplinary collection of poetry, music, film, and visual art. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.