Patterson Gap is at the end of Hell's Hollow, on the other side is the Chattahoochee National Forest.
Photo by Danny Mashburn
I'm not sure but some think this is Jackson Patterson's farm at the end of Hell's Hollow. This does look like the end of the hollow. If so, the house was built by my grandfather. Patterson Gap would be somewhere in the distance.
For a while I was maintaining another blog to archive my old poems, I've decided to shut it down and put some of my favorites here on this website. Eventually, I will have all of them on this website but haven't decided exactly how to proceed.
Below is a very early poem. It is a result, I believe, of the absorption of a culture by sound and silence. I didn't really grow up in the culture of the poem; but I "felt" it in what was said and what wasn't said around me. Of course, that culture is gone now, even the land is unrecognizable. This is just a scrap of that culture left behind and almost forgotten.
If I live too longIf I live too longdon't take meoff the mountaindon't take mefrom my homeif I live too long.