Appalachian Heritage

Lonesome Water 49 Lonesome Water by Roy Helton DRANK lonesome water: Weren't but a tad then Up in a laurel thick Digging for sang; Came on a place where The stones was holler; Something below them Tinkled and rang. Dug where I heard it Drippling below me: Should a knowed better, Should a been wise; Leant down and drank it, Clutching and gripping The overhung cliv With the ferns in my eyes. Tweren't no tame water I knowed in a minute; Must a been laying there Projecting round Since winter went home; Must a laid like a cushion, Where the feet of the blossoms Was tucked in the ground. Tasted of heart leaf. And that smells the sweetest, Paw paw and spice bush And wild briar rose; Must a been counting The heels of the spruce pines, And neighboring round Where angelica grows. 50 I'd drunk lonesome water, I knowed in a minute: Never larnt nothing From then till today; Nothing worth laming, Nothing worth knowing. I'm bound to the hills And I can't get away. Mean sort of dried up old Groundhoggy feller, Laying out cold here Watching the sky; Pore as a hipporwill, Bent like a grass blade; Counting up stars Till they count too high. I know where the grey foxes Uses up yander, Know what'll cure ye Of ptisic or chills, Of ptistic or chills, Never got going: I've drunk lonesome water. I'm bound to the hills. Roy Helton was bom in Washington, D. C, hut he spent a great deal of time in Pennsylvania and later in the Carolinas and Kentucky. This close association with "primitive" backgrounds resulted in his book of poetry, Lonesome Water, from which the poem "Lonesome Water" is reprinted by permission of Harper & Row, Copyright 1930, by Harpers, 1958 by Roy Helton. 51 ...