The Way to Cold Mountain
We never make it there.
Burnt and bee-stung
on the balds of Black Balsam,
you point to the shadowed
peak that once sheltered
the town, its people
herded up, driven out,
the seeds they sowed cinders
now by the side of some
chickweed-choked trail.
Gabriel Dunsmith's poems have appeared in Poetry, Tikkun, North American Review, Hunger Mountain, and Lake Effect. As a producer for the reading series Reykjavík Poetics, he has curated events featuring Anne Carson, Sjón, Paul Kane, Kristín Ómarsdóttir, and Ólöf Árnalds. Originally from Appalachia, he lives in Iceland.
