Weedy Heart of Stoney Mountain by William Rieppe Moore



Ash saplings by the backlot shook 
leaves like loose change in a pocket
of wind, cents I couldn't spare since 
youth, walking grocery aisles to fill the cart 
with want that doesn’t satisfy that much, but
this desire, somewhat green is free to take or leave
like my feet now in the chossy furrows shelved 
by nodal roots like swamp tupelos in
the low country where water recedes
against the western bank of sky. September's 
speckled corn on tiptoes reaches higher than
the nine foot line, penciling its growth against 
the doorframe of the hillside. Sheaves are brushed 
with magenta, vanilla and corn-green, you'd 
have to see to believe. Same as the weeds.

Sumpweeds green-pebbled wind-blown
clusters fence the garden with city walls
I march through like Norsemen, but Iva annua 
will come next year too without fear for
gas-powered tillers or long-legged farmers.
Scattered purple explosions pronounce 
Vernonia noveboracensis with ease, 
common ironweeds’ northern cousin. 
Heartwing sorrel is a good name for a 
weed or for anything. Its pink buds are rare 
to bloom like a good secret guarded better
than soil with ground cover. Their given 
name is Rumex hastatulus, the heart remembers 

its wings. But since it grew feet, the matted
feathers are caked clay against my side, while
this mountain is in cross-grained gravity, shoving
up rocks against my push-plow and pulling me 
back down. 




William Rieppe Moore is from Richland County, South Carolina, and currently lives in Unicoi, Tennessee with his wife, Cherith, where he practices homesteading and animal husbandry. He is enrolled at East Tennessee State University pursuing an MA in English. His work has received recognition from The Poetry Society of Tennessee, the "One Book, One Poem" contest, and Undefined Magazine's poetry contest.






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