Poetry & Nonfiction
POEM OF THE MONTH
OROGENY *
©Lucinda Roy from The Humming Birds
Beyond the field behind the house, beyond
North Main and all around this old New River
Valley the Appalachians rise, seismic’s
two-hundred-and-fifty-million-year-old
tectonic odometers. Ridged molars
take their usual bite out of the blue.
Before roads, before maps, before landscape
ushered in perspective, before sentience
instilled pathetic fallacy, these mountains
stood. Once taller than the Rockies, their peaks
eroded from majesty to modesty.
As far as we know, Earth is the only place
in the entire solar system with linear
mountain ranges. Before sight was tempered
by new-found relativity, the first
men and women saw them—these ranges
helped define omniscience, encouraged us
to shed our first-person limited point
of view. Gods are found on mountain tops.
Without these peaks, horizons are bound to soil;
with them, the giddy splendor of escalation,
the faith-engendering topography of always.
* The process of mountain formation.
From NARRATIVE ARCS IN HINDSIGHT
After so much loss I still believe—still want to believe tonight—
that the Small-Life we weave can dance a cosmos.
Coming soon-
Lucinda reads some of her poems
Nonfiction
Our education system is premised on the belief that students are willing to abide by the rules we establish and that they will seek help when they need it. Yet there are times when those who are mentally ill are not equipped to make a rational choice about such things as medication or counseling. At moments like these, who is morally obliged to intervene? The teacher, the parent, another student, a counselor, law enforcement? And what are the legal ramifications of intervention? In the United States, the legal options in the case of students who exhibit signs of being deeply troubled are less plentiful than we imagine. So we play a game of Russian roulette in education and in mental health, shuffling too many troubled young people through the system, convincing ourselves that no student would be crazy enough to load a gun and point it at someone’s head. "
