The turnoff from 23 was barely marked.
Everything green, overgrown, and my mother,
looking like a pale child,
lost in her black leather seat.

“About a mile from the mouth,” she said,
as the blacktop turned to gravel.
“Slow down, will you?”

Mare Creek is what’s called a holler,
a dirt road
between mountains
too narrow to be a valley.
The mouth is where a holler starts.
The head is where it ends.
My mother grew up at the head,
wanted to see it
one last time.

I should be more present,
but I can’t stop thinking about all the names we passed
on the drive down. Little towns called
Hamlack, Bluehole, Hinkle, Frew.
Any poet looking for a great catalog
should really try driving through Kentucky.
Flat Lick, Salt Gum, Broad Bottom, Jeff.

I read once that to name a thing
was to turn away from it.
My mother always named
Mare Creek with her stories,
like sweet water from the runoff,
or a pile of sparklers
rubber-banded in the grass —
scorched half the yard,
about blinded Ronnie’s dog,
and still, the way
Aunt Mag brushed her hair.

She puts a hand on my shoulder, so I stop the car.
There’s a rundown shack outside her window.
Might’ve been robin’s egg blue at one point.

“That’s where Dennis lived,” she said.
“We played together, my cousins and him. He wasn’t all there.”
Her eyes go to the hills above the house. She smiles.
“Used to put him in a tire and roll him
down the side of that mine
until he threw up.
He loved it.”

The porch light flickers on
a feral cat circling a lump
of rotten newspapers.
A suitcase is thrown open on the roof.

My mother turns away, gets a little smaller.
“I’m tired,” she said. “Let’s go back to the hotel.”