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At Cornwall Furnace Cherokee County, Alabama Jake Adam York
Blown out just after The War. The stack’s granite gapes. Each year saplings try, as gravity has longer, a reclamation masonry won’t allow. Lichens and moss do more. Promises of love and forevers mural its inside above constellations of beer cans and glass, ashes. The lid of sky’s diameter remains the same. In water only yards away, confluence of the Coosa and Chatooga, mud ebbs from a bed of scoria, slag I can find in channels miles south. Algae homes in its pocks. The friend who has brought me here stands waist-deep in the rivers, taking pictures near a deadwood stump when her feet find something odd. Together we struggle from the water a mass of pig-iron the size of a liver. It’s why Noble’s men built it. Probably a product of the last blast. Too late. We can imagine the boys who mined and cut the rock, brought the hematite, ore, and limestone, the slaves sweating in their tunnel under the hill, but do not. We know what fire will burn here tonight, what fumes will rise. Flawless architecture of a monument. Silent, we heft the pig and give it back. Originally appeared in Cross Roads
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