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Footprint on the Blue Ridge Parkway by Gene Kimmet

Updated: Mar 11



They came from hungry cities, failed farms

Towns with empty shops, under the banner

C.C.C. to lay these walls of stone

That stretch in hopscotch pattern

Along the Blue Ridge crest.


Names forgotten, faces blurred

In old photographs, yet here

In a curve of rock that holds

The mountain from the trail

The clear print of a hobnail boot

Pressed in a concrete patch.


A boy with small feet, perhaps

Yearning for a path home, stopped

For a moment and stuck a foot

Through time, a single step striding

Out from the dark of the thirties.






Portrait of the poet by Kira Sotos



Gene Kimmet's poetry collections include Shadows (Canopic 2019), Recollections of My Father (Canopic 2015), Skipping Stone (Dream Stone Press 2000) and In Fee Simple (Stormline Press 1986.)

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