Yona Aniwodi

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Rolling Fork High Tide

12/13/13, Atogiyi, Kundaghy(KY) -faris greybear-

Timber's felled, got my pelts, standin' on the bank, listenin' for the yell.
Watch the mud, don't slide, it's just about time to take a wild ride.
West Point market on the Ohio, buy my board feet and I can pay what I owe.
December rain has raised the waters again, the Rolling Fork's in high tide!

As I bend and stoop, I hear that old war whoop, and I loose the loop.
And my oak trunks roll down and splash, and I take my jump and dash.
With trees rafted, I now lead the troop, in a violent swirl of brown soup.
Damn the whirlpools, we float on, Locust and Hickory, Oak and Ash.

There ain't no time for sleep, cuz we just passed Sheep's Defeat!
We might meet our end below the mouth of Salt Lick at Gleanings bend.
That canyon chute, between the flatwoods bluffs standin' 500 feet,
strangles the river bottom, and ripples the waters rough, my friend.

At last Pottinger's in view, Gaddie Ford and Yellow banks are run through!
And Oh me! It's an inland sea! Flat water pancaked four miles wide.
Just a smooth cruise on down to the Beech and the Town Fork too,
as I complete my fourth ferry down the Rolling Fork high tide.

Ohiopimingo mounds at the mouth of the Salt, I recalled,
where the steamboats plow and the ice has thawed.
Time for the treacherous return, ridgerunnin' muldraugh's hill.
What a view on the way home, the valley full of flood and foam.

-dedicated to William Knott,19th century Marion County, KY Historian

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