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

The dusk of coal

From a Mountain

From a mountain
     on a Thursday evening
            cast in clouds,
A mountain's family blighted in poverty
     huddles in the muddy yard--
            yellowed laundry
    strung to trees the lonely decor.

Water from a rill, muffled,
    (but to the roots in drink),
           flows to the family
    of the haggard house
(Given long ago to the mountain's claim)
By a hose hung above the road,
     Heralding to the different whispered screams
           of four-wheel drives
With faces in the mask of coal.

And the mother's mother's mother
                  piano
hollering out mistimed notes
To the Bartlick Chapel walls
             Is sung to by just the ghosts in the pews.

life in death

the fungus discovers its life
in the death of others

onto the future

into the sun,
leaving the past to history,
its memory colored and skewed.

Casting a shadow,
and  what will become of it?
What will be its legacy?

a certain irony

hope peeking around

the darkness attempts to occlude hope.
and we envision  hope as distant,
untenable,
teasing  us on the eastern shore.
but hope spreads itself upon
the mirrored water,
quietly reaching into the night.