Appalachian photo by RAW photography

 

I was born

to outhouses

pigpens

and tobacco patches

walked barefoot

amidst

blackberry briars

beech trees

and broken gray tombstones

 

I fell from

Shetland ponies

Kool-Aid summers

and barn rafters

hatched like

turtle eggs

Daddy took from

their momma

on a misty mountain morn

 

I smelled of

wood-burning stoves

po’folk

and “God will not abandon us,”

roamed free

up the hollers

across creeks

and into broom sage fields

 

I shivered

at Panther calls

mirages

and my daddy’s ghost tales

gobbled up

ripe persimmons

cornbread

and dry land fish

 

I kept hold

of all my heart’s

young tears

and filled up the swimming hole

where Johnny

was drowned

pressed the flowers

and kept yesterdays

alive.