Ruminating on the day, the peach and purple sky giving way to black, I was drawn back to the morning’s service and the disembodied sound of a dulcimer plucking out the mournful . . . Continue Reading
Her deep connection with these Appalachian Mountains is evident in her poetry. Her words encapsulate the very essence of this region – from ancestors to the natural world and in between. Her own mountain spirit and philosophy of interconnectedness flow through her poetry . . .Continue Reading
It looked like all his worldly possessions were in the cart. He was holding up a cardboard sign that said, “Please Help.” Next to him, sitting at his feet, was a small brown dog.
Like everyone else, I passed him by, but, as I drove away, it began to bother me. I’m not wealthy, but I could certainly . . . Continue Reading
His breath is bad: cigarettes and agitated solitude. He stands outside his car excavating shrapnel from his hand, vestiges of a lawnmower blade sharpened cruelly, sparks taking revenge as metal glazed in splinters. The VA doctor, to whom he resents going, says he is lucky the constant picking has notContinue Reading
They waited for me before they took him. I closed the car door, slogged past family, noted the numbed, distant faces and swollen, zoned eyes; passed the old country roses, sweet and sundry; passed his hand-crafted shed that smelled of fresh cedar, heard the bustle of birds all around, aflutter.Continue Reading
With trepidation; I approached my childhood Appalachian home, a shack really, high above the railroad tracks. The sole remaining object was the toilet, standing forlorn among the broken shards of rotten wood. A toilet, ironically, that we were never allowed to use, when there was a perfectly good leaf availableContinue Reading
Autumn is the season of dying and death – but life, as in our own experience, carries on. Winter, to me, is the first season of life. In temperate zones, perennial plants, most notably trees, are asleep in winter. Thing is, a lot of infant vegetative color appears throughout theContinue Reading
Hauntings are everywhere in the Appalachian Mountains. Whether one believes in such things or not, a person cannot deny the shivers in the darkness when an owl hoots a soothing sound of wisdom, or the early morning sounds of a house “settling” as it pops and cracks at one endContinue Reading
Detective Gowan stood across from me and fiddled with some recorder. He perked up when another detective entered the room. “Name’s Bob,” he said. “Bob Kroy.” He slid a paper in front of me. “Sign this before you make your statement. Says you’re tellin’ the truth – to the bestContinue Reading