Sometimes, as the weekdays click by like a train churning thunka thunka purposeful yet deceptive, the sum of its sheer doggedness depositing me with unexpected speed on yet another Friday with no coalescence, no particular object of attention bobbing to the top from the background sea of ideas for this page, I yield to the steadfast gravitational pull of those near-and-always-dear, almost interchangeable twins: poetry (with its inherent music), or music (yep, with its poetry).
No matter that the world seems going to ruin (hasn’t it always been so?), its cruel tempests both natural and human descending with oppressive regularity on saints, sinners and all those in between.
Why do we remember particulars of what we did, what we heard, what we felt, what we saw, what we smelled, what we feared, what we envied…?
Still: stout sentinels of hope surround us. Witness lone flowers writhing through concrete to glint in the sun. Also: mothers of every species and stripe continue to drop babies onto blankets and bush, straw and mud—life insistent on more of itself, forging always ahead, world without end, amen.
Under and over it all, as both foundation and punctuation: the beauty and terror of the natural world, and the hymns sung to it by the arts.
Case in point: the multi-genre writer Silas House, best-selling novelist, playwright, poet, filmmaker, radio commentator, music journalist, environmental activist, college professor and occasional backporch singer in his native South, where ice tea is served to fan-waving matrons, and string instruments rule the day.
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If you were to segment House’s various accolades and interests onto a dartboard it would hardly matter where your dart lands in deciding which of his works to pursue. Both critically and commercially acclaimed, he appears to have reached a sweet spot at age 54 of being only as busy as he wants to be—which from here looks to be very busy indeed.
My own dart through this fine fall week, no doubt traveling the Internet’s Great Chain of Algorithmic Being, landed on a poem whose 32 lines transported me to a place in House’s native rural Kentucky called “Cumberland Falls” (pictured below in a vintage photo from almost 90 years ago).
There, we tumble mid-poem through the heart-skip of near catastrophe, one fateful instant later begetting the first stirrings of erotic attraction before coming to rest, as the thunderous “symphony” of the falls never does, with the quiet, awe-struck sense of wonder that ensures these young men will crawl back over the boulders they traversed mere minutes before forever changed.
All that, in the span of a few words, dwelling on a memory-become-crystalline art decades later, the moment distilled for all time.
Let’s give it a read before looping back for some commentary.
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CUMBERLAND FALLS
By Silas House
In high school the biggest dare was to slink
over the slick rocks flanking Cumberland Falls,
where the wide but shallow river dives
seventy feet into a deep pool of froth.
There, people say, catfish big as men twist
and slither, awaiting suppers sped
their way. You can see a rainbow at night,
shimmering on the mist during a full
moon and a clear sky. This is true. I snuck
behind the green curtain once with my best
friend, whose name I won’t say because he
never came out. Just as we reached the veil
of water where we would disappear
into another world, I slipped. My right
leg slid down the cold boulder and before
I could plunge into the churning chaos
where torrent met river, he grabbed hold
of my hand. I was so electrified
by his touch I didn’t think of how close
I was to being swept away.
Instead I thought how a small moment
of ecstasy is akin to drowning.
He held on for a beat longer
than necessary. The roar behind
the falls was a deafening symphony heard
only by those brave enough
to penetrate this darksome cavern
carved by centuries. Fern-laden, alive
with the smell of moss. A secret cathedral
made of wildness and wet. We were mesmerized,
and stood watching the cascade as if frozen
yet, as if we might see through to the other side.
(From the volume, “The Bitter Southerner,” copyright © 2023 by Silas House)
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First, the sense of awe when coming into the presence of a waterfall. It’s the majesty and sheer thunder of a huge ocean wave without the lull, all-encompassing, no inhalation in between.
Nothing but roar, and no one immune to its power.
And then these young teens, derring-doing as befits their age, never more than sideways glancing at the potential tragedy lurking and awaiting its turn, ever patient.
The poet recalls “a rainbow at night,/shimmering on the mist during a full/moon and a clear sky. This is true.”
Fact, something he has come across and can now vouch for, make a concise declarative sentence about, because he was there, he had ventured where so many others never had into this “darksome cavern/carved by centuries.”
Then, an almost casual aside: his “best” friend remains under the cloak of anonymity in this poem “because he never came out.”
Should we surmise that the poet had? (Yes, he has; previously married to a woman with whom he had two daughters, House has been married to fellow writer and occasional collaborator Jason Kyle Howard since 2015.)
Back to the cliff: As the future poet slips toward “the churning chaos” below, the veritable hand of God in the person of his friend, exactly the god he needs, reaches down to grab hold of him. But it’s not his own near-doom the poet seems most struck by. Instead, it’s “how a small moment/of ecstasy is akin to drowning.” (All who have experienced that moment nodding along…)
And then, the friend “held on for a beat longer/than necessary.”
That “beat” bespeaking worlds, etched in memory as significant beyond words, beyond the decades that have elapsed since, beyond the rational mind’s ability to understand why it has lingered so. Where in the brain does that piercing acuteness of one-second’s experience reside?
Why do we remember particulars of what we did, what we heard, what we felt, what we saw, what we smelled, what we feared, what we envied, what we cleaved to, who grabbed us and struck us and saw into us and transformed us with a word or phrase, when the sum total of what we ourselves have forgotten could likely fill the world’s libraries?
And how is it possible that such a narrow escape, with adrenaline coursing through the bloodstream under threat of extinction, is simultaneous in memory, becoming one and the same experience, with a sudden awakening of eros, as one party holds on a “beat longer than necessary”—which the other party notices? And decades later, remembers having noticed.
We contain multitudes, indeed.
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Finally, sure, it’s possible the poet only thinks he remembers, having painted the scene with an emotional overlay stirred by fond remembrances from a formative time. But in this matter, I have grown much closer to the camp of another poet, the late Maya Angelou, in maintaining: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Substitute “life” for “you” in Angelou’s maxim, and we can perhaps better appreciate the enduring power and “truth,” on its own terms, of our emotional response to life, how it burns sometimes hot but always real in us if we but give it some oxygen and space to tell us how it is in there, where the sometimes turbulent waters flow in a symphony beyond reason.
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See and hit the Follow button at https://www.facebook.com/andrew.hidas for regular 1-minute or less dispatches from the world’s great thinkers, artists and musers, accompanied always by lovely photography.
Deep appreciation to the photographers! Unless otherwise stated, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing
Homepage rotating banner photos (except for library books) by Elizabeth Haslam https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/
Library books by Larry Rose, Redlands, California, all rights reserved, contact: larry@rosefoto.com
Waterfall at top of page by John Thomas https://unsplash.com/@capturelight
“Found photograph, handwritten on back: “Opal at Cumberland Falls, Kentucky, August 10, 1939,” courtesy of Thomas Hawk, San Francisco, California https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/
Silas House portrait by C. Williams, courtesy of the poet’s website https://www.silas-house.com/
I liked the whole poem, but for me, the last four lines were just killers.
A secret cathedral
We were mesmerized,
and stood watching the cascade as if frozen
yet, as if we might see through to the other side.
There are a lot of power words there: Secret cathedral, wildness and wet, mesemerized, cascade, frozen, and the last line about “the other side”. Everybody wants a peek at that! I’ll be reading more of him, thank you.
I , like almost everyone I know, have been looking for those rainbows at night a lot lately.
“Still: stout sentinels of hope surround us”–I spent several minutes this morning pulling weeds from the cracks around the concrete borders of my backyard pool. They are impervious to time and all its trappings. While I disdain their permanence, their constancy does get me off my ass, and 7000 steps later the lawn is mowed, edged, and looking good. As far as experiencing a near catastrophic event like daring oneself to challenge the sheer power of a waterfall, I’ve been spared that experience. However, of this I’m certain, only boys would attempt such a feat; girls would have the sense to say to themselves “No way!” and depart to a safer place. Finally, recalling a particular moment in my life, especially those with cobwebs some fifty years old, is cloudy at best. I, too, find truth in Maya Angelou’s words that our feelings far outlast factual reality.
Ooo it’s been a while since I could sit and read a post of yours in peace! This was a great place to step back into the flow. I’ll read more of him, too. I like “darksome cavern.” And then to hear my faves the Avett Brothers, sing a gorgeous song. This was a reminder of fabulous music and poetry, and also of your beautiful writing. Thank you, Andrew!
Jonathan, as so often happens to my great pleasure, I let go of my intended mention of those final lines in the interests of brevity, but then a reader fills it in for me! It is indeed a powerful ending flourish to bring the poem on home, and I thank you very much for pointing to it.
Dennis, you & me &, as you say, just about everyone else, pal…And I am besotted with that image of the night rainbow playing atop the mist of the falls; I could picture and appreciate it in the exact moment I came across it, which was also the moment I decided to write about this poem. Glad you “saw” it too!
Robert, sometimes when I’m out doing grunty yard work like hacking, weeding, getting my inevitable case of itchy poison ivy when clearing the mostly neglected (for good reason) far side of the house, I tell myself: “You wouldn’t miss THIS if you moved to some facility!” But the truth is: Yes, I would. For all kinds of reasons we could have a much longer conversation about… And your assertion that only boys would attempt waterfall crossings & similar foolery is no doubt true in a general sense (with exceptions), but brings up a whole host of interesting discussion points I’ve been mulling for a long time about the interplay of biological-cultural-genetic influences on individual & societal behavior. Also food for a much longer discussion!
So good to hear from you again, Jeanette, and glad for your appreciation of the Avett Bros. I usually try to tie the song directly to the music, and though this one was a bit of a stretch, something about their tone and the unadorned, unembarrassed directness of their message felt important to convey in this time of so much venom and mendacity.
I might be the only one in the audience here with a power cord of a connection to Cumberland Falls. I first laid eyes on it in 1979 around the age of 20 on a trip with my mother and brothers to the east coast. My mom, a widow, with nine children and a day job teaching special education in the Chicago public schools took us on educational vacations. Because of time and distance, we always headed to the east from the Chicago area visiting battlefields and historical sites and seeing beautiful countryside. As we and she got a little older, she searched for places we could sit and stay for a few days and have enough to do. My oldest brother had started having children, and we all began coming to Cumberland Falls, in the Daniel Boone National Forest in southeastern KYwhere we could rent cabins built by the Civilian Conservation Core (CCC), tread the trails by the same, and enjoy the many wonders of the section of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where Cumberland Falls reigns supreme. Cumberland Falls is the largest waterfall as measured by water volume in the eastern United States, south of Niagara Falls. We just thought it was wonderful.
After a day’s drive from Chicagoland, cars laden with food, chairs, cd players and toys, we’d descend on the falls, hopefully early enough for a quick and vigorous hike to the falls, steeply down for 40 minutes, to see the thunderous beauty, then sweating back up to the cottages for another 60, through the green mossy humidity and birds getting ready for bed.
The falls were mesmerizing but to stay there a week you needed more and the wonderful trail system gave you that. Obsessed at our age with Narnia and Tolkien (still are) we could believe we were in Rivendell and Cair Paravel as we walked stone steps put in by the CCC in the 1930s when they built out the park after the Dupont family gave it to the state of Kentucky. There were easier trails and hard trails, sunny ones and dark mossy ones, the beech forest, groves of mountain laurel and down by the river? yes lots and lots of large flat rocks tempting you to venture out into a wonder that was anything but tame.
Those kids that my brother raised on vacations there are now in their 40s with kids and we’ve been back a few times in the last decade, the trails seeming as ageless and endless, hot humid and verdant just like they did when I first saw them 50 years ago…
I’m glad to learn about Silas House and sorry I missed that information but every year we visit Berea College, a one of a kind College with a commitment to educating anyone without financial means; with one of their missions being handiwork, which has resulted in beautiful American wood furniture and other objects that we have brought to our houses over the years. If you can ever get to southeastern Kentucky you will not be sorry to visit Cumberland Falls, to take yourself back in time, or forward, or maybe just right there watching the water hurtle down and following maybe one part of it tumble while the rest seems to stop in time behind it.
So glad to learn about Silas House, and last fun fact, my fabulous dance teacher in college was from Corbin, KY, the artists are powerful from the land of trees and trails and hills.
Thanks so much for this slice of your life, Jeanette, made all the more glowing for its powerful connection to this poem. Enjoyed every word of it!