For Eureka By Grey Weatherford‑Brown

By The Rising Phoenix Review on June 21, 2024

For Eureka

Savor the metaltaste of the mountain's blood seeping
from the spring well set in stone, carved of lime and Arkansan quartz
glittering like pyrite, like zirconium. There's magic here in the body
of the countryside, a cosmic force akin to gravity, magnetism
of those trailing vines, wisteria, people moving as clockwork. This might be
the first and last chance to taste it, the flavor of peace.

Spit it in the dirt, roll a ball of mud, let it dry in sun and bake in your fingerprints.
This earth in your pocket becomes a bead. This bead, a token which you thumb
in antique stores full of confederate memorabilia. You hold it when you pray
in the pews with your head down but your eyes always open. It is there the first time
you are called a slur, holding your timid, childish hand.

Eureka is a fleeing maiden on horseback, set against the smoky purple of dusk.
When you watch the sun set back home you know it is the same setting sun over the Springs,
same sky. You are far away now, alone in the dark cave of life which opens its maw
and swallows you. You find no magic here in the endless sea of ranch homes
and steeples, every neighbor a repetition.

But those gurgles in the mountains have existed for centuries, and for centuries
people have touched them and drank them and held them and lived by their side.
Just like lovers. Just like you—a ripple in the healing pools, the Basin, a motion
of liquid like any other. You are not singular, nor inconsequential, nor solitary
in your being. Hold that soil talisman again and let yourself be.

Rolling bluffs, buff and tan like deer vellum, jungled beech, fir, ash, oak,
dappled green and green and green, the tide pull of cattails and cornstalks in wind,
lakes full of long snout gar, chaos of rivers, antiquity of stone and fossil, caverns
which reach out endlessly as branches of trees, everything blanketed in the tropical
thickness of hot air. Arkansas unfurls for you and calls out:
Welcome Home.

By Grey Weatherford-Brown

Biography:

Grey Weatherford-Brown is an undergraduate at Susquehanna University. They are a poet, memoirist, and sister. Although they are a Pittsburgh native, their family hails from Arkansas, and they have grown into their Ozark roots. Their work has previously appeared in The Literary Bohemian and Essay Magazine.