a poem by gary mcdowell
My Daughter Wanted to Go for a Hike, a Real Hike
Barfield Park, Murfreesboro, TN
By the muddy, we park. Six inches of rain
in the past week, and the Harpeth spills
its floodplain, eats into the trails, trebles
like a fever, steady and slow, knocking down
whatever stands in its way. An empty Diet
Coke, a shredded grocery bag, a driver head-
cover from the golf course down the road,
a family of wood ducks. Everything floats
briefly. We trek a mile into the woods away
from the river to higher ground. Tell me when
you start to get tired; we need the energy to get back.
On a bluff, we eat granola bars, sip some
water. In the canopy, rustles and trills. Cicadas,
squirrels, cardinals. At the top of the next
hill, a switchback: One route over four miles,
the other just over one. Two miles in, she’s
tired. Twilight is still hours away—we’ve
plenty of time. We rest against a shagbark,
spy two does in a clearing. They dart to cover,
blend seamlessly into the brush. Like a magician,
she says. Each quarter mile a cure, something
conquered, a reason to turn around, go deeper
into the green—that’s what we’re after anyway,
isn’t it, a refuge, a diminishing halfway between
powerlines and bird-filled skies, each field, each
pine, each crest, each hairpin an elegy to what’s nearly
gone: It goes too fast, says every parent, but what
we don’t utter to one another is that we wouldn’t
do it all over the same way. Sometimes I say too
much, other times not enough, but I give everything.
Gary McDowell is the author of the forthcoming novel, Weasel (Running Wild Press, 2027), and most recently of Aflame (White Pine Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 White Pine Press Poetry Prize. His other books include Caesura: Essays (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2017); Mysteries in a World that Thinks There Are None (Burnside Review Press, 2016), winner of the 2014 Burnside Review Book Award; Weeping at a Stranger’s Funeral (Dream Horse Press, 2014); and American Amen (Dream Horse Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Orphic Prize for Poetry. He's also the co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010). His poems and essays have appeared recently in American Poetry Review, The Nation, Gulf Coast, Southern Review, Ploughshares, and others. He lives in Nashville, TN where he is a Professor of English at Belmont University.