Ancient Rituals

The woods are calling
To gather us together
Old men, young men
Travel from here, everywhere
Gathering back home.
Gear in the back of pickups
Wives and youngin's kissed
Waving goodbye
See y'all soon.

Deer camp calls to us
Calling to our mountain souls
Remindin' us of how it was
Maybe how it should be.
We gather over campfires
Laugh and tell old stories
Of hunts forgotten
Old friends remembered
New stories waiting for their telling.

It is a treasure
To gather with old men, young boys
To laugh, listen and be.

Mountain Man

I am the mountain man
I am the Appalachian mystic
The preacher and pappy
Sitting quietly at the end
Of a long rough wood porch
Listenin' to old women gossip
Grinnin' as they whisper
Louder than they think.
Listenin' carefully
Peelin' off long curls
Of cedar wood
Piling up
Round my old brogans.

I am the old man of the hills
Knowin' cures and tricks
How to cure an ear ache
How to make a wart disappear
How to conjure up a storm
To call fishes an' snakes
Secrets that were passed to me
From the emerald hills
Of ancestral Celtic homes

One day I'll repeat back
What I sit and hear
At the end of the porch
Them women will sit in wonder
Taken aback I know
All the things I know.
Like I am a wonder
A magick, a trickster.

I am the old man of the mountains
I'll sit and listen
Peelin' a long curl of cedar.
Grinnin' when you turn your head.

Odd One Out

The moon is a selfish slice
Like a piece of muskmelon
Given by a miserly aunt.
Laid carefully in the sky
That is deep blue
Like the flower
Of a deadly nightshade
Hidden in the garden
Next to the tomato plants.
Cousins, yes
But how different their fruits.

Dream My Dreams

Dream my dreams
Walk in them
Through the hills
Of my home.

Taste the sweet water
Drawn from the well
Of my remembering
Sip it slow.

Run through tall grasses
To follow the fleeing deer
Run hard though you know
The race is not yours to win.

Sit still in a hayloft
Watching through the door
Seeing the world
Secret and hidden from all.

Dream my dreams
Sit and watch the joy
The comfort of the mountains
The harmony of the hills.

Can You See?

One of the greatest fears as I write about the hills and hollers of Appalachia, the mountains of my youth and the mountains that will cradle me as I age, is that when the reader looks they will not see what I see.  I fear that when you, dear reader, look into my little part of the mountains you will see only trees, thick woods and will walk right past the wonders I speak of so often.

I suppose that I am something like human rose colored glasses.  Showing you a world that is so easily common, but so particularly wonderful to those that will stop and feel the earth neath their feet, smell the sweetness of the mountain laurel or sourwood, see the richness of the greens that make up the hillside of trees, brush and sweet grasses.

I would love to dip a bucket of water, taste it and offer you a glass (maybe in a mason jar reserved for the most important of visitors) just as a wine steward would in a New York restaurant... waiting for you to smell the subtle nuances of the spring water, to know that cress grows just up the creek and filters the spring water to give it the sweetness just lingering on your palate.

I would have you taste the red and white acorn with me to show you that the red has more tannin in it and it is bitter, so the deer and turkey naturally leave it till last.  Once you would taste you would always know as you see the deer kick through the leaves looking for the sweet white oak acorns.

We would pull up a little sassafras sapling and wipe the dirt away to make tea from the root, pour sourwood honey in it bought from my neighbor and sip from old  and chipped china cups left me by Great Aunts who lived and died in the hills and who await the last trumpet on a hillside in Clay County, Kentucky.

I am a voice, crying in the wilderness, yes.  My cry is not one of repentance, but a cry to stop, look to the hills from which we, many of us came.  Listen to our hearts and hear the heart cry that calls to us, feel the beat of the heart of the mountain in our very chests and know we are connected, blood, bones, flesh and spirit to the hills.

"Come home, come home, come home" is the cry of homestead and hidden holler.  There is a place for us.  It is home, it is us, it is Appalachia.