The Story Behind Glen Falls Trail

The story behind a poem.
 
Glen Falls Trail
 
I climb the limestone stairs
through an arch in rock,
into the earth’s womb,
pass through to a surprise:
George loves Lisa painted on a wall.
 
I wonder, did he ever tell her?
Did she ever know or think of him?
Raise a brood of screaming children?
Did they kiss near wild ginger above the stony apse?
 
Did lady’s slipper orchids
adorn their meeting place
where deer drink from rocky cisterns?
 
Did their love wither
like maidenhair fern,
delicate as English Lace?
 
The symbols have outlived the moment.
There is only today,
only the murmur of water underground,
my finding one trickle into a pool.
 
I never knew George or Lisa.
The rock bears their names in silence,
names the stream forgot long ago.
 
Glen Falls Trail won an award from the Tennessee Writers Alliance in 2007, and I read it at their awards ceremony at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville. The poem figures prominently in the story “How I Became a Poet.” published in the online magazine Waxing and Waning.  The poem was later published in The Southern Poetry Anthology: vol. 6, Tennessee, from Texas Review Press.  It also appeared in The Avocet and Southern Light: Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets.

Please pardon me for cross-posting this on multiple platforms, but I am particularly proud of the poem and the story behind it.