Please join us at Hickory Museum of Art this Saturday, June 20 at 2 pm as we tour current artworks and explore ekphrastic poetry with Art of Poetry. It is free and open to the public.

“Log yard in Appalachia, 1940’s” photograph for Earl Goodboe, photographer unknown

Kelly DeMaegd
Earl From Terrabone
after “Logyard in Appalachia, 1940’s” by Unknown Photographer
for Earl Goodboe 1899-1980

He suffered his entire life from epiphora,
an affliction that produces an overflow

of tears; crying, constantly crying. Ruddy
six-fingered lumber camp roughs relished

making him the whistle punk. He showed them.
Sixteen, strong, lean, commanding a team

of horses and a cross-cut saw, logged
the giant, pitchy ponderosa pine

of the Bitterroot range. Learned the trade
from his father, river driver, jam crew

member, running log-to-log on the Ottawa
all the way to Quebec. Grandpa Earl hauled

107 pounds of saw through Lolo meadows
in waist deep snow. Destruction gnawed

at him. He argued in English, French,
Norwegian, against the evils of clear-

cutting, advocated selective logging,
well before its time. Gentle man

among roustabouts, Rocky Mountain
topography etched on his face, ravines,

ridges heaved and carved by two
blue lakes, continuously flooding.

Kelly DeMaegd reads her work at the March 20, 2015 Art of Poetry event at Hickory Museum of Art. Photo courtesy of Roger and Ginny Sanford.