ELEGY: HOLY CROSS, KY

I would walk out past the tobacco barn
and squint to find the three crosses
on the mountaintop, and—
I knew from hiking there—the stone
outline of an unfinished church,
but in winter the crosses just become
all the leafless trees, black and bristly
like the hairs on a hog’s back. My dad’s
standard for whether anyone was really
country was if they had ever seen a hog
suspended from a winter tree, above
a just-dampened fire, the hog shaved
down to the mottled gray hide and then
rendered into pieces of chop and shoulder
and the feet tossed in with the collards.
My dad’s standard for whether someone
was really country
was if they had ever reached down
in their back yard
to pull from the earth
a turnip or potato, and eaten it right there,
without bothering to knock off all the dirt.
You’re missing out—he’d say—on one
of the finer pleasures of life.