Giving Water to a Drowning Man
Lord, when will I feel less like drowning?
I grew up listening to country music,
savoring the pain songs about tragic romance.
Words that pulled me toward a rawer truth,
holding close the weight
of life’s hard edges.
I couldn’t wait until I grew up,
got divorced, and wrote my own sad songs
about lost love and having my corn shucked.
It was unfair to my three ex-wives
that I never told them this story,
how I had been rehearsing heartbreak,
long before they entered the chorus,
long before the music turned on me,
But it didn’t seem to matter at the time.
Greg Clary is a retired college professor who was born and raised in Turkey Creek, West Virginia. He now resides in the northern Pennsylvania Wilds.
His photographs have appeared in The Sun Magazine, Looking at Appalachia, Rattle, Hole in the Head Review, Pine Mt Sand & Gravel, Tiny Seed Journal, Watershed Journal, About Place, Change Seven, Appalachian Lit, and many more.
His writing has been published in Rye Whiskey Review, The Bridge Literary Journal, Northern Appalachia Review, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Waccamaw Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Trailer Park Quarterly, Black Shamrock Magazine, Rust Belt Review, and Tobeco.
His book of photographs and poetry, “The Vandalia in Me”, was published in 2024. He is co-author of Piercing the Veil: Appalachian Visions (2020).
