Eureka
By Ron Rash
Here was no place for illumination
the cotton dust thick window-strained light.
The metal squall drowned what could not be shouted
everything geared warping and filling.
Though surely there were some times that he paused
my grandfather thinking This is my life
and catching himself before he was caught
lost wages or fingers the risk of reflection.
Or another recalled in those reckoning moments
remembering the mountains the hardscrabble farm
where a workday as long bought no guarantee
of money come fall full bellies in winter.
To earn extra pay each spring he would climb
the mill's water tower repaint the one word.
That vowel heavy word defined the horizon
a word my grandfather could not even read.
Ron Rash, "Eureka" from Poems (New and Selected). Copyright © 2016 by Ron Rash. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
