Praise for Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place

“‘I will guide you,’ bell hooks promises, and delivers, in her remarkable collection, Appalachian Elegy. In meditations intimate and clear, with ‘radical grace,’ she negotiates ‘beauty and danger,’ the animal and human worlds, the pain of history, the dead and the living. With wisdom and courage, she moves through lamentation to resurrection, and the worlds she unearths are an ‘avalanche of splendor.’”

—Paula Bohince, author of The Children and Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods

“Hush arbors were safe places in the deep woods where slaves could commune with each other to lift their choral voices to the heavens as they tarried for freedom. bell hooks comes from a people who deeply connected with this country’s ‘backwoods’ and hills in Kentucky and decided to stead in these spaces. Tending and tilling the land that afforded them independence and the freedom to unmask in isolation. They were ‘renegades and rebels’ who didn’t seek to civilize Kentucky’s wilds, instead developing a besidedness with the land that informs bell hooks’s sense of self and belonging. This collection of poems is a departure for the important polemicist, a place where she is able to roam her boundless imagination using her emotional intelligence as her primary compass. Praise songs for her ancestors sit beside her meditations on turtles. Here is a rare glance into the soul of our beloved, prolific, yet private bell hooks, who took her mother’s surname as her nom de plume. Here she returns to her mother’s woods, to the ‘wilderness within.’”

—dream hampton, journalist and filmmaker

“The collection reflects aesthetic and linguistic choices based on the thinking and feeling of someone who has made important contributions to contemporary thought and who thinks and feels deeply about what Kentucky—as ‘here’ and home—means to her.”

—Edwina Pendarvis, Professor Emeritus at Marshall University and author of Like the Mountains of China

“bell hooks has crafted a lyrical, sweeping panorama, deftly conjuring the tangled root and insistent steam of Appalachia. In these lean, melodic poems, she holds the land close; it’s achingly apparent how essential these memories are to the raw, unleashed spirit that typifies her body of work. These communiqués, from an elsewhere the mind visits too rarely, reside in that constantly shifting space between melancholy and celebration. No one but bell hooks could have taken us there.”

—Patricia Smith, four-time National Poetry Slam individual champion

Appalachian Elegy

Appalachian Elegy

Poetry and Place

bell hooks

Copyright © 2012 by Gloria Jean Watkins (bell hooks)

Published by the University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,

serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre

College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,

The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College,

Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University,

Morehead State University, Murray State University,

Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,

University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,

and Western Kentucky University.

All rights reserved.

Editorial and Sales Offi ces: The University Press of Kentucky

663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008

www.kentuckypress.com

16 15 14 13 12        5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

hooks, bell.

Appalachian elegy : poetry and place / bell hooks.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-8131-3669-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8131-3670-7 (pdf) —

ISBN 978-0-8131-4076-6 (epub)

1. hooks, bell—Childhood and youth—Poetry. 2. Appalachian Region—

Poetry. 3. Kentucky—Poetry. I. Title.

PS3608.O594A84 2012

811’.6—dc23

2012018046

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Contents

Introduction: On Reflection and Lamentation

Appalachian Elegy

Index of First Lines

Introduction

On Reflection and Lamentation

Sublime silence surrounds me. I have walked to the top of the hill, plopped myself down to watch the world around me. I have no fear here, in this world of trees, weeds, and growing things. This is the world I was born into: a world of wild things. In it the wilderness in me speaks. I am wild. I hear my elders caution mama, telling her that she is making a mistake, letting me “run wild,” letting me run with my brother as though no gender separates us. We are making our childhood together in the Kentucky hills, experiencing the freedom that comes from living away from civilization. Even as a child I knew that to be raised in the country, to come from the backwoods, left one without meaning or presence. Growing up we did not use terms like “hillbilly.” Country folk lived on isolated farms away from the city; backwoods folks lived in remote areas, in the hills and hollers.

To be from the backwoods was to be part of the wild. Where we lived, black folks were as much a part of the wild, living in a natural way on the earth, as white folks. All backwoods folks were poor by material standards; they knew how to make do. They were not wanting to tame the wildness, in themselves or nature. Living in the Kentucky hills was where I first learned the importance of being wild.

Later, attending college on the West Coast, I would come to associate the passion for freedom and the wildness I had experienced as a child with anarchy, with the belief in the power of the individual to be self-determining. Writing about the connection between environments, nature, and creativity in the introduction to A Place in Space, Gary Snyder states: “Ethics and aesthetics are deeply intertwined. Art, beauty, and craft have always drawn on the self-organizing ‘wild’ side of language and mind. Human ideas of place and space, our contemporary focus on watersheds, become both models and metaphors. Our hope would be to see the interacting realms, learn where we are, and thereby move towards a style of planetary and ecological cosmopolitanism.” Snyder calls this approach the “practice of the wild,” urging us to live “in the self-disciplined elegance of ‘wild’ mind.” By their own practice of living in harmony with nature, with simple abundance, Kentucky black folks who lived in the backwoods were deeply engaged with an ecological cosmopolitanism. They fished; hunted; raised chickens; planted what we would now call organic gardens; made homemade spirits, wine, and whiskey; and grew flowers. Their religion was interior and private. Mama’s mama, Baba, refused to attend church after someone made fun of the clothes she was wearing. She reminded us that God could be worshipped everyday, anywhere. No matter that they lived according to Appalachian values, they did not talk about themselves as coming from Appalachia. They did not divide Kentucky into East and West. They saw themselves as renegades and rebels, folks who did not want to be hemme d in by rules and laws, folks that wanted to remain independent. Even when circumstances forced them out of the country into the city, they were still wanting to live free.

As there were individual black folks who explored the regions of this nation before slavery, the first black Appalachians being fully engaged with the Cherokee, the lives of most early black Kentuckians were shaped by a mixture of free sensibility and slave mentality. When slavery ended in Kentucky, life was hard for the vast majority of black people as white supremacy and racist domination did not end. But those folks who managed to own land, especially land in isolated country sites or hills (sometimes inherited from white folks for whom they had worked for generations, or sometimes purchased), were content to be self-defining and self-determining even if it meant living with less. No distinctions were made between those of us who dwelled in the hills of eastern or western Kentucky. Our relatives from eastern Kentucky did not talk about themselves as Appalachians, and in western Kentucky we did not use the term; even if one lived in the hills where the close neighbors were white and hillbilly, black people did not see themselves as united with these folk, even though our habits of being and ways of thinking were more like these strangers than those of other black folks who lived in the city—especially black folks who had money and urban ways. In small cities and towns, the life of a black coal miner in western Kentucky was more similar to the life of an Eastern counterpart than different. Just as the lives of hillbilly black folks were the same whether they lived in the hills of eastern or western Kentucky.

In the Kentucky black subcultures, folks were united with our extended kin, and our identities were more defined by labels like “country” and “backwoods.” It was not until I went away to college that I was questioned about Appalachia, about hillbilly culture, and it was always assumed by these faraway outsiders that only poor white people lived in the backwoods and in the hills. No wonder then that black folks who cherish our past, the independence that characterized our backwoods ancestors, seek to recover and restore their history, their legacy. Early on in my life I learned from those Kentucky backwoods elders, the folks whom we might now label “Appalachian,” a set of values rooted in the belief that above all else one must be self-determining. It is the foundation that is the root of my radical critical consciousness. Folks from the backwoods were certain about two things: that every human soul needed to be free and that the responsibility of being free required one to be a person of integrity, a person who lived in such a way that there would always be congruency between what one thinks, says, and does.

These ancestors had no interest in conforming to social norms and manners that made lying and cheating acceptable. More often than not, they believed themselves to be above the law whenever the rules of so-called civilized culture made no sense. They farmed, fished, hunted, and made their way in the world. Sentimental nostalgia does not call me to remember the worlds they invented. It is just a simple fact that without their early continued support for dissident thinking and living, I would not have been able to hold my own in college and beyond when conformity promised to provide me with a sense of safety and greater regard. Their “Appalachian values,” imprin ted on my consciousness as core truths I must live by, provided and continue to provide me with the tools I needed and need to survive whole in a postmodern world.

Living by those values, living with integrity, I am able to return to my native place, to an Appalachia that is no longer silent about its diversity or about the broad sweep of its influence. While I do not claim an identity as Appalachian, I do claim a solidarity, a sense of belonging, that makes me one with the Appalachian past of my ancestors: black, Native American, white, all “people of one blood” who made homeplace in isolated landscapes where they could invent themselves, where they could savor a taste of freedom.

In my latest collection of essays, Writing Beyond Race, I meditate for page after page on the issue of where it is black folk may go to be free of the category of race. Ironically, the segregated world of my Kentucky childhood was the place where I lived beyond race. Living my early childhood in the isolated hills of Kentucky, I made a place for myself in nature there—roaming the hills, walking the fields hidden in hollows where my sharecropper grandfather Daddy Gus planted neat rows of growing crops. Without evoking a naïve naturalism that would suggest a world of innocence, I deem it an act of counterhegemonic resistance for black folks to talk openly of our experiences growing up in a southern world where we felt ourselves living in harmony with the natural world.

To be raised in a world where crops grown by the hands of loved ones is to experience an intimacy with earth and home that is lost when everything is out there, somewhere away from home, waiting to be purchased. Since much sociological focus on black experience has centered on urban life—lives created in cities—little is shared about the agrarian lives of black folk. Until Isabel Wilkerson published her awesome book The Warmth of Other Suns, which documents the stories of black folks leaving agrarian lives to migrate to cities, there was little attention paid to the black experience of folks living on the land. Just as the work of the amazing naturalist George Washington Carver is often forgotten when lists are made of great black men. We forget our rural black folks, black farmers, folks who long ago made their homes in the hills of Appalachia.

All my people come from the hills, from the backwoods, even the ones who ran away from this heritage refusing to look back. No one wanted to talk about the black farmers who lost land to white supremacist violence. No one wanted to talk about the extent to which that racialized terrorism created a turning point in the lives of black folks wherein nature, once seen as a freeing place, became a fearful place. That silence has kept us from knowing the ecohistories of black folks. It has kept folk from claiming an identity and a heritage that is so often forgotten or erased.

It is no wonder, then, that when I returned to my native state of Kentucky after more than thirty years of living elsewhere, memories of life in the hills flooded my mind and heart. And I could see the link between the desecration of the land as it was lived on by red and black folk and the current exploitation and destruction of our environment. Coming home to Kentucky hills was, for me, a way to declare allegiance to environment struggles aimed at restoring proper stewardship to the land. It has allowed me to give public expression to the ecofeminism that has been an organic part of my social action on behalf of peace and justice.

In Longing For Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation, theologian Ivone Gebara contends: “The ecofeminist movement does not look at the connection between the domination of women and of nature solely from the perspective of cultural ideology and social st ructures; it seeks to introduce new ways of thinking that are more at the service of ecojustice.” In keeping with this intent, in the preface to Belonging: A Culture of Place, where I make a space for the ecofeminist within me to speak, I conclude with this statement: “I pay tribute to the past as a resource that can serve as a foundation for us to revision and renew our commitment to the present, to making a world where all people can live fully and well, where everyone, can belong.”

The joyous sense of homecoming that I experience from living in Kentucky does not change the reality that it has been difficult for black rural Kentuckians to find voice, to speak our belonging. Most important, it has been difficult to speak about past exploitation and oppression of people and land, to give our sorrow words. Those of us who dare to talk about the pain inflicted on red and black folks in this country, connecting that historical reality to the pain inflicted on our natural world, are often no longer silenced; we are simply ignored. It is the recognition of that pain that causes a constant mourning.

My cries of lamentation faintly echo the cries of freedom fighter Sojourner Truth, who often journeyed deep into the forest to loudly lament the pain of slavery, the pain of having no voice. Truth spoke to the trees, telling them, “when I cried out with a mother’s grief none but Jesus heard.” When I first walked on the hills belonging to me I felt an overwhelming sense of triumph. I felt that I could reclaim a place in this Kentucky landscape in the name of all the displaced Native Americans, African Americans, and all the black Indians (who cannot “prove” on paper that they are who they really are). Chanting with a diverse group of ecofeminist friends, we called forth the ancestors, urging them to celebrate return migration with us. We spread sage, planted trees, and dug holes for blossoming rose bushes in the name of our mother Rosa Bell. I wanted to give her a place to rest in these hills, a place where I can commune with her spirit.

The essays in Belonging: A Culture of Place give voice to the collective past of black folks in Kentucky. They include family values that cover the ethics of life in the backwoods and hills of Kentucky. If psychologists are right and there is a core identity imprinted on our souls in her childhood, my soul is a witness to this Kentucky; so it was when I was a child and so it is in my womanhood. My essays are almost always written in clear polemical prose, nothing abstract, nothing mysterious. When poetry stirs in my imagination it is almost always from an indirect place, where language is abstract, where the mood and energy is evocative of submerged emotional intelligence and experience.

Poetry is a useful place for lamentation. Not only the forest Sojourner found solace in, poems are a place where we can cry out. Appalachian Elegy is a collection of poems that extend the process of lamentation. Dirge-like at times, the poems repeat sorrow sounds, connecting the pain of a historical Kentucky landscape ravaged by war and all human conditions that are like war. Nowadays we can hear tell of black jockeys, the ones who became famous. But where are the stories of all enslaved black servants who worked with horses, who wanted to mount and ride away from endless servitude? Those stories are silenced. Psychohistory and the power of ways of knowing beyond human will and human reason all ow us to re-create, to reimagine. Poems of lamentation allow the melancholic loss that never truly disappears to be given voice. Like a slow solemn musical refrain played again and again, they call us to remember and mourn, to know again that as we work for change our struggle is also a struggle of memory against forgetting.

Appalachian Elegy

1.

hear them cry

the long dead

the long gone

speak to us

from beyond the grave

guide us

that we may learn

all the ways

to hold tender this land

hard clay dirt

rock upon rock

charred earth

in time

strong green growth

will rise here

trees back to life

native flowers

pushing the fragrance of hope

the promise of resurrection

2.

such then is beauty

surrendered

against all hope

you are here again

turning slowly

nature as chameleon

all life change

and changing again

awakening hearts

steady moving from

unnamed loss

into fierce deep grief

that can bear all burdens

even the long passage

into a shadowy dark

where no light enters

3.

night moves

through thick dark

a heavy silence outside

near the front window

a black bear

stamps down plants

pushing back brush

fleeing manmade

confinement

roaming unfettered

confident

any place can become home

strutting down

a steep hill

as though freedom

is all

in the now

no past

no present

4.

earth works

thick brown mud

clinging pulling

a body down

hear wounded earth cry

bequeath to me

the hoe the hope

ancestral rights

to turn the ground over

to shovel and sift

until history

rewritten resurrected

returns to its rightful owners

a past to claim

yet another stone lifted to

throw against the enemy

making way for new endings

random seeds

spreading over the hillside

wild roses

come by fierce wind and hard rain

unleashed furies

here in this untouched wood

a dirge a lamentation

for earth to live again

earth that is all at once a grave

a resting place a bed of new beginnings

avalanche of splendor

5.

small horses ride me

carry my dreams

of prairies and frontiers

where once

the first people roamed

claimed union with the earth

no right to own or possess

no sense of territory

all boundaries

placed by unseen ones

here I will give you thunder

shatter your hearts with rain

let snow soothe you

make your healing water

clear sweet

a sacred spring

where the thirsty

may drink

animals all

6.

listen little sister

angels make their hope here

in these hills

follow me

I will guide you

careful now

no trespass

I will guide you

word for word

mouth for mouth

all the holy ones

embracing us

all our kin

making home here

renegade marooned

lawless fugitives

grace these mountains

we have earth to bind us

the covenant

between us

can never be broken

vows to live and let live

7.

again and again

she calls me

this wilderness within

urging me onward

be here

make a path

where the sound

of ancestors speaks

a language heard beyond the grave

this earth I stand on

belongs to the many dead

treasure I find here

is all gift

tender solace

holding back the future

the dead that will not let us forget

late ones

and even further back

the ancients

dreaming achieving

they will not let us forget

time is aboriginal eternal

they carry us back

take us through the sacred portal

that we may come again then again

into the always present

8.

snow-covered earth

such silence

still divine presence

echoes immortal migrants

all life sustained

darkness comes

suffering touches us

again and again

there is pain

there in the midst of

such harsh barrenness

a cardinal framed in the glass

red light

calling away despair

eternal promise

everything changes and ends

9.

autumn ending

leaves like

fallen soldiers

manmade hard hearts

fighting battles on this once sacred ground

all killing done now

dirt upon dirt

covers all signs of death

memory tamped down

ways to not remember

the disappeared

dying faces

longing to be seen

one lone warrior lives

comes home to the hills

seeking refuge

seeking a place to surrender

the ground where hope remains

and souls surrender

10.

here and there

across and down

treasure uncovered

remnants of ancient ways

not buried deep enough

excavated they surface

objects that say

some part of me

lived here before

reincarnated ancestors

give me breath

urge me—live again

return to familiar ground

hear our lost people speak

11.

no crops grow

when dense clay dirt

packed solid

defies

all manmade

intent to destroy

let a blessing come here

let earth

heal and rejoice

she has here

mother of grace

and constancy

wild roses bloom

scatter these hills

with beauty

that does not linger

offering still the promise of healing

and return

12.

mud sliding down

wet can do this

make danger

fall upon us

turn the pure in heart away

no water for holy cleansing

no water for drying thirst

just black death

smothering earth

soot after fire

13.

wingspan wide

death covers all

prey and predator

turkey buzzards overhead

at the bottom of the hill

no eternity beckons

just ongoing decay

a deep smothering emptiness

profound prolonged lamentation

birds cry high

14.

hard rain

softens harder ground

from solid rock

to mud so thick

feet go under

making every step

dirge and trial

even as joy surfaces

at last today

we plant

we hope

15.

pink and white oleander

not native to Appalachian ground

still here lies

years and years of poison

rebel flags

heritage and hate

in the war to fight hunger and

ongoing loss

there are no sides

there is only

the angry mind of hurt

bringing death too soon

destroying all our dreams

of union

16.

go high up

climb to the very top

look out

remnants of

majesty remain

here where soldiers stand

watching their gods die

what will be given

in return for shelter

an end to hunger

sanctuary

look from the mountaintops

an army of broken promises

land invaded then left

as though there were no other way

to claim belonging

17.

straight ahead

the road curves

signs signal

no motorboats allowed

this lake our water source

let us drink

clear and true

there are swans

resting here magical presence

all reflecting peace

18.

when trees die

all small hearts break

little living creatures

happy and safe

uprooted

now in need of finding

new places

when home

cracks and breaks and falls

all life becomes danger

how to find

another place

where all is not

yet barren

19.

all fields

of tobacco

growing here

gone now

man has made time

take them

surrendered

this harsh crop

to other lands

countries where

the spirit guides

go the way

of lush green

leaving behind

the scent of memory

tobacco leaves

green yellow brown

plant of sacred power

shining beauty

return to Appalachia

make your face known

20.

the glory in old barns

surpassing time

wood gray shadowed black

faded colors

places where painted signs

tell of products

no longer in use

standing or falling down

these structures

carry the weight of history

work done and undone

memories of toil and torment

there was bounty here

tears for sowing

lamentations for the dead

all fragments that remain

remind us

give thanks

gather praise

21.

turtle islands everywhere

heads poking out

bodies embraced in the world

before the coming of the white man

a sea of calm

where turtles rest

on lands breathing life

outside water

that turtles may play

fat succulent slow

enchanting us

with strength to guard and protect

a wall of hardness

store dreams

of a world without humans

a wet world everlasting

22.

sometimes falling rain

carries memories of betrayal

there in the woods

where she was not meant to be

too young she believes

in her right to be free

in her body

free from harm

believing nature

a wilderness she can enter

be solaced

believing the power

that there be sacred place

that there can be atonement now

she returns with no fear

facing the past

ready to risk

knowing these woods now

hold beauty and danger

23.

bring Buddha

to rest home

in Kentucky hills

that outside each window

a light may shine

not a guilt teaching tradition

be balanced

know loving kindness

end suffering

rejoice in the oneness of life

then let go

carry nothing on your back

travel empty

as you climb steep mountain paths

24.

clouds dressed in gray

for mourning

for grief held

white for adoration

dark for sorrow

come soon

an eternity simply hidden

where all sun and glory reigns

even so

in this now

there is just

a promise

of shadows

relentless

25.

soil rich with lime

grass beyond green

turning toward blue

hills of plenty

all but gone

bent under the weight

all human greed

we speak then

tell of a god of miracles

who moves mountains

yet manmade steel

ravishes this earth

all for coal

deep and black

a destiny of burning heat

covering flesh in ash

26.

equine whispering

horses once roaming freely

out in the open

now live enclosed

captured by boundaries of fence and wire

manmade domestication

horses grazing quietly

fo ur-legged buddhas

standing in grace

forgiving

27.

sublime shadows of midnight

bronze brown

in gray white

dappled black beauty

thunder

man of war

a dynasty of flesh

roaming in the mind’s eye

pondering

such power harnessed

driven

preyed upon by human

will and desire

28.

morning dawn

mist-covered day

dreaming triumph and victory

horses gather

a herd at the top of the hill

bonded

whispering souls

ready to run

speaking a language only they can hear

sounds beyond

interpretation

no heavy rider’s move

in this magic time

no need to tame and mount

all at once

they race

to reach the beyond

29.

softly treading black bear

leaving a trace

green crushed

under innocence

just for now

breaking free

leaving forest for

hill and mountain

fleeing coonskin caps

memories of

renegade red men running

fleeing daniel boone

white wrath

all nature

slaughtered in

the colonizing wake

animals abandoned

alone untouched

sheer good fortune

guides one bear away

a gift of time

with no boundaries

for soon

hunters come

soon comes dying

soon we are captives

30.

burning pain

has its own rhythm

back and back

shaking the foundation of

trees once strong

brought down

by fire

by fierce want

uprooted

all solid

familiar ground

naked now

going once

going twice

leaving damaged

and broken

unending

blackness

31.

returning to sacred places

where all is one

embraced belonging

an intense field of possibility

wondrous goodness

fills the air

grant us great spirits

another chance

to reclaim and nurture earth

glorious sky

divine water

in everyday the blessing of weather

offering change

a constant passing

of life into death

and back again

32.

walking the long way home

walking ever so slow

talking to be

wholly in this world of wonder

standing still

waiting

standing in the center

of a long and winding

dirt road

leading uphill

to a small house

surrounded by lilacs

black-eyed susans

roses and honeysuckle vines

a bench at the bottom

that bodies may rest

before they climb

33.

tap dancing

on tin roofs

heavy rain falls

wetness spreading

all over borders

refusing containment

flash flood warning

sirens call stay in

be still

guard your heart

let rain be

the only necessary movement

34.

fierce winter cold

mind whispers

a lost landscape

telling stories

of how it was then

seated near fire

drinking homemade spirits

sake and brandy wine

spirits bring contentment

for a time

carry us closer

to the sacred

moving through bitterness

our yearning to hold on

to moments of ecstasy

where we imagine

we hear clearly

destiny calling

35.

winds of fate

take the air

push it past the known

in this world of nature

no one can undo

mystery abounds

harsh cold burns skin

fire waits

raging tempests

sweep us

carry us toward

destiny recorded

written down

past present future

change comes

36.

mammoth caves

places alive

before the invention of hours

paleolithic hunters

painting the caves

of lascaux

horses shot with arrows

wild creatures

no longer seen

cave dwellers

searching for sacred paths

then sharing revelation

on these walls

connecting caves

crossing boundaries

of nation and time

bold remains

of untouched history

37.

stained black

Kentucky oak

plank fences

mark boundaries

ghost riders

where the dead live

on the edge of time

slaves worked here

long ago

caressing horse flesh

breathing shared dreams

cared for them

when witnessing

the breaking of yet

another animal spirit

born to be wild and free

a bond forged

whisper to forgotten souls

run run

go as fast as you can

run run

seek an end to bondage

38.

toward light

each bird flies

higher then higher

then swooping down

as though to plummet

as though air a net

to catch and comfort

who can fear

earth

who can fear

sky

when faced with

an infinite possibility

each moment given

a chance to soar

to enter beyond

39.

ritual places

a set offering

dead bird

on wooden slats

carry beauty still

stretched and moaned

as though

bearing its own cross

suffering those last moments

there are altars

in these hills

organic monuments

calling the sacred

rock on which to stand

and know divine presence

witness and testify

as birds of prey

fly high

opening wide wings

reaching past death

40.

on hallowed ground

I cast the circle

that there may be

haven for the lost

refuge and sanctuary

turning to the hills

I place feet on steady ground

letting earth hold me

in praise of air

I lift my hands

to the heavens

call down grace for blessings

for anointed being

turning toward water

I let go remembered sins

cleanse and purify

burning sage

I bring fire to warm

and illuminate

all around this body

light moves

a communion of gathered

spirits

41.

fierce unyielding winds

pressing pushing

against window glass

trees swaying

branches falling

chaos warning

of danger

she does not want

to cut them down

she does not want

to fear those mighty oaks

standing guard

for more years

than can be counted

strong roots sustaining life

holding back

the rush of time

let earth testify

they have the

right to fall

when life comes to an end

to move

in harmony with fate

42.

heavy heart

as fallen snow

bringing behind

wet damp darkness

small dreams

coming true

green coming

from seeds

planted long ago

draw from this

winter death

courage to go on

in the face of white cold

see past this

all-surrounding

whiteness

that beyond

there is hope

that sorrow ends

43.

when the dawn

is still almost dark

I rise restless

watch the

morning come

sly slow

movement into light

from shadow play

an unveiling

inside this dark heart

a yearning to live

as nature lives

surrendering all

44.

fly high

dreaming bird

higher and higher

on the wire of time

no road blocks

no stopping

to think through

why wings flap

what makes

the worthy soar

only this

pure heaven

right now

sky high

45.

barren broken hill

once a place of possibility

now only remnants

old glory gone

heritage sullied with hate

ancestors indigenous and dark

held captive

by soldiers and greed

by bloody conquest

battlefields where the dead live

unclaimed not mourned

histories buried forgotten

lost to a world of cover-ups

ghosts return to these hills

to grieve

cry out lamentations

mourning the desecration

of earthbound bodies

ghosts gather here

make promises

of resurrection and return

46.

overlooking water

I stand

at the top of the hill

looking out

see swans on the lake

grand plumage

more elegant than peacocks

their presence mysterious

all secrecy

how came they

to choose Appalachia

gracing us with their vision

as we climb down

to be close to such beauty

that it may

open our hearts

show us such love

as to offer

no turning back

47.

red beard

strut

strut

wild turkey

congregate

walk in peace

deciduous woodland

undercover

walk to mate

walk to feed

strut

strut

iridescent plumage

moving harem

doing a slow dance

strut

strut

48.

sunken faces

a collapsing gray

shutting down

still bodies

standing in doorways

sitting on

falling-down front porches

on crooked steps

cold now

bone upon bone

outsiders come

taking land

taking life

stripping removing destroying

mountains ravished

leaving in this corrupt wake

souls grieving

earth laments

cries out loud

that justice may come

that it is never too late

49.

with water

anoint the day

all this season

of drought kills

quiet slaughter

effortless

no need to love war

in this space

ongoing silence

absent wetness

call for surrender

for want and thirst

we are brought low

face to face

with essential need

a necessary yearning

we long for rain

for water

to pour into our hearts

an offering of radical grace

50.

all old souls

chant

be tender

walk soft

the bodies of our dead

lie here

wildflowers

red yellow white

adorn memory

pink purple blue

lost in a world of green

all have been

promised

wedded to morning

that will soon come

tears fallen and gone

only faint traces

of grief remain

sorrow lingers

making soil soul deep

our weeping ground

51.

in the gray blue wash of dawn

sacred secrets no longer hidden

make tapestries of repressed memories

soldiers lamenting

the tyranny of war unending

let earth renew

broken spirits

find precious

love once shared

that will not be forgotten

remembered confederates

fugitive desire

past wounds heal

bind broken hearts

give all to glory

beyond country flag nation

yearning for atonement

they bring light

come to early morning fresh

52.

renegades roam here

fugitive longing

darker than night

glorious black bodies

enslaved

with no hope of

belonging

to land

in this new world

of white freedom and flight

some live to die

sleep with no dreams

some find ways

to unravel mysteries

threads of power and domination

a palimpsest of greed

they hope

and hope

for change

find homeplace inside

letting anguish bleed out

make way for new life

53.

blackbirds

come rest home

let your dreaming

winged flying spirits pause

meditate

pause your deep soul be peace

for you can rest here

in this green

enchanted place

claim sanctuary

in these hills

made sacred

by native trust

small yet mighty

find your belonging

54.

burning body of love

no lead turning into gold

flesh only

turning into pain and ash

the bodies and being of old men

coal black skin

soft to touch

smooth as velvet

as kid gloves

they once danced

dreamed themselves

priests and poets all

now they sleep

under loam

rich and generous

as a full heart

55.

take the

hand-me-downs

make do

no culture of poverty

claiming lives here

we a people of plenty

back then

work hard

know no hunger

grow food

sew clothing

build shelter

moonshine still

wine from grape

we a marooned

mountain people

backwoods souls

we know to live on little

to make a simple life

away from manmade

laws and boundaries

spirit guides teach us

offer always

the promise

of an eternal now

56.

star of david

tree of life

double wedding band

a nine patch

such patterns

once shaped our destiny

pieces of cloth

marking a woman’s life

sewn together scraps

bits and pieces

tell us life stories

pieced by hand

remnants of passion

an unfulfilled desire

sisters coming together

making peace

offering comfort

ways to warm

to open hearts

57.

fierce grief shadows me

I hold to the memory

of ongoing loss

land stolen bodies shamed

everywhere the stench of

death and retribution

all around me

nature demands amends

spirit guides me

to take back the land

make amends

silence the cries of the lost

the lamentations

let them sleep forever sublime

knowing that we

have made a place

that can sustain us

a place of certainty

and sanctuary

58.

earth spirit

shout to raise

the living dead

each one

hear ancestors cry

mend the broken bones

wild damaged ones

earth spirit

know our wandering

our anguished offering

through time

earth spirit

reclaim soil soul seed

all the living green

help us surrender

that we may live again

59.

migrating birds

come rest here

teach us

all life follows

divine change

find pattern in structure

go true north

follow organic spirit

guided prophecy

hidden among growing things

that there may be hope

in these hills that there be renewal

that all living beings

may rise up

proclaiming pure delight

beauty that restores

beyond all manmade limitations

be welcomed

60.

wilderness within

wild woman

aging crone

wise hag

she who holds

mystery

stir the cauldron

tend the flames

bring life to fire

carry messages

from the future

a shroud of blackness

will cover the earth

sooted sorrow

so deep ash will fall like rain

heat rising

from unseen

burning

61.

lingering twilight

all-enveloping mist

that which is deep within us

rising

fugitive desire

in these lonesome hills

time loses meaning

fragments of past lives

hold hostage

the will to nurture growth

slaughter hope

against all sentient green

living beings

offering no escape

mountains dissolve

as earth slides into ruin

62.

harsh winter wind

again and again

soul deep snowfall

holding earth

shades of black and gray

among barren landscapes

the mind may know

a springtime of green coming

still in the present

the inescapable now

bitter cold buries secrets

put away

all promises of resurrection

63.

stark stolen sky

no birds in flight

in sight

no sign that lush

verdant life

lay abundant

here

war ravaged

our hills and mountains

burns flesh to ash

turns our water

against us

slaughters thirst

makes our

longings kill

all is black

coal black greed

no way to choose life

when greed

brings the constant

sound of death

calling away

deliverance

64.

daybreak

night falling

into blue shadow

gray streaks

as the trickster

chases memory

repeat

tell

the same stories

until the past

is left behind

65.

my world is green

wild green

green with no limits

big bold green

growing changing

celebrates the

green in things

all green goodness

66.

fire so hot

death so dry

just ready

to let loose

fierce heat

miles and miles

of flames

climbing hills and mountains

felling trees

calling all hearts

to burn and break

hold in memory

lifelines gone

a show of hands

Index of First Lines

The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

again and again

all fields

all old souls

autumn ending

barren broken hill

blackbirds

bring Buddha

burning body of love

burning pain

clouds dressed in gray

daybreak

earth spirit

earth works

equine whispering

fierce grief shadows me

fierce unyielding winds

fierce winter cold

fire so hot

fly high

go high up

hard rain

harsh winter wind

hear them cry

heavy heart

here and there

in the gray blue wash of dawn

lingering twilight

listen little sister

mammoth caves

migrating birds

morning dawn

mud sliding down

my world is green

night moves

no crops grow

on hallowed ground

overlooking water

pink and white oleander

red beard

renegades roam here

returning to sacred places

ritual places

small horses ride me

snow-covered earth

softly treading black bear

soil rich with lime

sometimes falling rain

stained black

stark stolen sky

star of david

straight ahead

sublime shadows of midnight

such then is beauty

sunken faces

take the

tap dancing

the glory in old barns

toward light

turtle islands everywhere

walking the long way home

when the dawn

when trees die

wilderness within

winds of fate

wingspan wide

with water

Kentucky Voices

Miss America Kissed Caleb

Billy C. Clark

New Covenant Bound

T. Crunk

The Total Light Process: New and Selected Poems

James Baker Hall

Upheaval: Stories

Chris Holbrook

With a Hammer for My Heart: A Novel

George Ella Lyon

Famous People I Have Known

Ed McClanahan

Noth ing Like an Ocean: Stories

Jim Tomlinson

Sue Mundy: A Novel of the Civil War

Richard Taylor

At The Breakers: A Novel

Mary Ann Taylor-Hall

Come and Go, Molly Snow: A Novel

Mary Ann Taylor-Hall

Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York

Frank X Walker

When Winter Come: The Ascension of York

Frank X Walker

The Cave

Robert Penn Warren