Ashokan Farewell
by Jeffrey Burghauser (January 2019)
There is a God Above Us Both (Young Hunting IV), Julyan Davis
Moonlight hits the leaves with the weightless
Precision of some thin, sinuous
Dulcimer hammers. Continuous
Firmament (dateless, gateless, fateless)
Asks the fiddler to upward ease
A tune, and he feels that allotted
Searing heave set into the knotted
Ribbon of his neck. Eternity’s
Flesh, seeming to loosen, counterscores
Into áutolysisíal rifts—
Or it will until the daylight lifts
Like a quilt of blinded warblers.
My body climbs the air. Or it might.
Tender Appalachia, goodnight.
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Ashokan Farewell is the title of a 1982 neo-traditional Appalachian tune by Jay Ungar.
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Jeffrey Burghauser is an English teacher in Columbus, Ohio. He was educated at SUNY-Buffalo, the University of Leeds, and currently studies the five-string banjo with a focus on pre-WWII picking styles. A former artist-in-residence at the Arad Arts Project (Israel), his poems have previously appeared (or are forthcoming) in Appalachian Journal, Lehrhaus, New English Review, and Iceview (Iceland).
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