Still Literary Contest Judge's Selection: Denise Helton
Denise Helton was born in Princeton, West Virginia, and currently resides in Charleston, South Carolina. She is a librarian and the manager of the Learning Resource Center at the Charleston campus of Strayer University. She is an advocate of information literacy and equality. She will forever consider West Virginia her true home.
My Mother Fears
These mountains have gone the way of the whale
Only by stumps do they cling to land
Sheltered fingers linger over roots
Gnarled, hopeless, un-praying hands
Done with battle like soldiers logged in quicksand
Here, is where the mountains come to rest…
The wind shakes the nettles hollow
My mother fears the echoing sound
Shivers loose a memory of her West Virginia shadows
Ghosts of her mother, her father, her daughter
The shock a reminder we ever lived at all.
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