from west virginia

             Road to Bartlick Chapel

From the mountain, the brook
splashes over the sandstone configurations,
cragged and demure,
to the hills choked in an August forest:
          a restlessness cries the mountain
shown by the whiteness of the brook
over the sandstone channeled
in the cheek of the mountain
behind the Chapel,
         laying in white and silent of tongue
         under a clouded, quarter moon.

To the sides of the mountains
is a road cut to follow
the clefts and hollows,
encroaching upon the tamelessness
        of this domain
        in the Appalachians,
known only by its coal
and mountain rigs gearing down the grade.

And gripping the rails
is the Clinchfield Railroad
       grumbling over the Russell Fork River