SETH GRINDSTAFF - AT SYCAMORE SHOALS

Seth Grindstaff teaches high school creative writing classes in northeast Tennessee. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Sheila-Na-Gig, The Dead Mule, Forbidden Peak Press, Vita Brevis, and Panoplyzine, among others. He spends his time alongside his sun-loving wife and foster children.

​At Sycamore Shoals

we’d walk as far as the park’s gravel was spread
out alongside the Watauga River to get a good 
perspective of the shoals, too inexperienced 
to navigate yet in our kayaks. We’d picture

the Overmountain Men wading their way
out from our 8th grade history class, 
rifles lifted to ford hip-high waters, hazardous 
even after the TVA forced its change. 

Before long, talk would turn to Andrew
or Logan, how both claimed to get their first
real kiss under those sycamores, secluded--
two creek crossings from the parking lot, 

where the path ends to circle a sitting bench
like the silver loop around the eye
of a needle. I still can’t thread
the idea that their pick-up lines worked

or that once the city widened
the highway, and we had kids our own, 
the spot could be seen from the road
clear as day, and the bench, renovated

as some boy’s Eagle Scout Project, sits
unfilled in the shade, so that what travels
with us won’t have a fogged hush
to test the waters by, 

to ford their youth unseen,
green as kudzu, feet rooted 
by the bank, time peeling white 
like sycamore. 
 

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