We were born in Carolina
where the mountains addressed Heaven
by its First Name and the rivers
fell and foamed the fish within them
while the trout fed on the mayfly
and the currents cleansed deep pools.

Wagons could not crest the high pass
we walked over, waking groundhogs,
as we crunched to school each winter
morning while the hoarfrost harried
apples from the freezing branches
in the orchard of our neighbour.

We spoke English old when Johnson,
changed it little but defined it
in his dictionary written
a century after we crossed oceans
seeking purchase in Virginia;
pacing, Piedmont hills behind us,

till the mountains rose around us,
lifted up our souls in singing,
taught us solace of the ridges.

Running water turned the wooden
blades we made by splitting cedar
into shingles and affixing
them in forms of fixed gyration
that contrived to take rotation
from the creek and turn our millstone

grinding cornmeal, grinding flour,
while we spun our lives in tales,
mountain backdrops: pirates, whales.

She remembers when dystopias had been elective.
This is proof, the court rules, that she is too old
or ‘dangerous’ – their Newspeak term for lucid –
to be allowed within the city walls.

She stands in a ploughed field. She sees tired guards
whip braceros into trucks for their return
to their cell blocks in the city with high walls.
As she watches it grows dark. The wolves come for her.

In the city yes-men fawn around the Potentate
competing for a signal from his eyes
that if he likes them he will let them live
another day. He promises they can pillage.

The wolves surround her. She looks at them and laughs,
a laugh that in town would cost her fines and prison.
The wolves laugh too, the way wolves do. They lean,
she and the wolves, together. They go hunting.

Senior members of POSSE (Party Of Singularly Selfish Entitlements) today hotly denied charges of eating the poor. A spokesman said, ‘These insinuations are criminal and ridiculous. I would not touch a poor if one fell down in front of me, much less even think about eating one. Just because we make laws in secret doesn’t mean they are undemocratic. Our new ways and means bill is a good example. It mandates that anyone regardless of race, sex or religion who has a net worth of less than $5,000 for three consecutive years gets recycled into products clearly marked Unfit for Human Consumption and sold as pet food.’