HUMANITY HAVING LOST TOUCH WITH WILDERNESS IS NO GREAT TRAVESTY

But I can’t help wanting to walk barefoot through thorns, thistles, squishing
my toes into dark mud, then wash them clean
                                                                                in creeks that whisper at night.

I was closer to life in youth when I walked alone, the river leading me by hand,

while whippoorwills sang the coming of dusk.
                                                                       
                                                Some nights, I didn’t go home, just laid under a cypress,

breathing the damp air,
hearing the honeysuckle vines teeming with bees buzzing low. The bull frogs

croaking stacked on the barking squirrels and cottonmouths I didn’t see, but smelt.
I don’t want deliverance; I don’t know what that means.
                                                                        For the world to be more spacious would suit

me, instead, I watch the death of the sun, dipping low behind the oaks in the west,

then I shut the blinds, strangling the remnants of wilderness.



About James Dunlap:
James Dunlap is a Creative Writing major at the University of Arkansas. He received his Associates of Art at Pulaski Technical College. He's been published three times through PTC, one piece in the scholarly journal Milestones, and twice in the Literary Journal The View From Here. He has received awards for Best Prose and Best Poetry from PTC, as well as honorable mention in the Tails from the South Literary Festival.

THE LAST BEAR ON PETIT JEAN MOUNTAIN

So they went with guns and with knives

for the white tails. They crunched dead

leaves as they passed through the Eye of the Needle,

like hunched over camels, all their gear

on their backs, and millions of years

of sandstone arched over head, lichen

creeping down boulders split by Cedar Creek.

Rising up from the tree littered valley

like an ancient dirge is the fog

of the ghost of that French maiden, scarlet

and delirious with Swamp fever,

her grave just below. Early morning,

the winds from another county howl

and swirl in and out of the mouth

of Skull Rock. From behind the turtle rocks

came a black bear, massive head, narrow muzzle 

rooting the ground with gripping, rhythmic steps.

The hunters clawed up a rock wall into the mouth

of a cave as the bear drew close a dark shadow

chilling the ground and in the distance

the people of the valley heard rifle burst;

and dark bear blood splattered the trees.

Here I stand now in the hollow next to Bear Cave

in the shadow sandstone.  It’s a breezeless

morning, no howling wind, no coolness

on sweat beads, and no dark shadow

to drag across the fallen leaves,

just the empty, voiceless crevice of fog.  

 

About James Dunlap:

James Dunlap is a Creative Writing major at the University of Arkansas. He received an Associates of Art at Pulaski Technical College. He's been published three times through PTC, one piece in the scholarly journal Milestones, and twice in the Literary Journal The View From Here. He received awards for Best Prose and Best Poetry from PTC as well. He has written for the school news paper at UA. Recently, one of his short fiction pieces was published in Sliver of Stone issue 3, one poem was published by Red Fez. A poem is forthcoming in Niche Literary Magazine. He also received honorable mention in the Tails from the South Literary Festival and read the same story for their syndicated radio show.