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I'm an extension
of my environment.

My bones,
a tumble
of traveling limbs.

My feet,
filed rough with rocks,
press into the Earth.

I watch her flesh
mold to accept me,
know I belong to these mountains,
my footprints walking
with ancestral ghosts.

Know that I am
of the wild creativity of earth,
the spirt of receptive water,
resolute soil,
uncontrolled air,
and antiquity.
We are of antiquity.

The hills
once ripened with sweet rivers of rain,
have been poisoned.

Her rivers swell
inside my breasts-
arsenic
and mercury.

Her milk is drying up.

I watch my neighbors bury her
beneath her own flesh.

My parched mouth waits,
watches my faucet leaking
dry earth,
and brittle metal bones.

I watch my siblings assemble,
to push her in ways she will not bend.

They shave her bare,
and I am naked
against relentless waters,
and the battery
of unchecked winds.

As she thins,
so do my cuboards-
the sacks of poke, plaintain,
dry land fish,
sassafras tea,
dandelions and berries.....

....and my medicine cabinet
of black cohosh,
mullein cough syrup,
sang,
and yeller root.

My body shakes with the violence,
of her exhaustion,
her death rattle catches,
a desperate bug
in my throat.

The wings crushed
against closed, hungry necks,
fall to my feet.
She will not rise again.

I watch her sink
into herself,
houses and wells
sink into unstable land,
my hope
sinks away,
buried beneath the new ground.

The storms replace
her fortitude.

I tried to read the lines
detailed on her bones,
like holy words.

My stone chapel,
where I held the thoughts of God,
for FREE,
has been torn down
to make way for the church of greed.

Inside,
I can find discounted books
full of human thoughts
about what the thoughts of God might be.

Something seems lost
in translation.

Outside,
all her secret places,
her ancient caves,
where my ancestors sought refuge.
have been replaced with warholian houses,
that taunt me with her name.

Mountain View,
Chestnut Mountain,
Mountain,
Mountain,
Mountain,
Come See Our Mountains (dissapear)....
come see.

I stare into dark eyes,
above yellow faces full of smiles
that light up her grave.

They have buried her
beneath the black orchard.

I take her last breath into mine,
a black spill of ink,
from when we signed it
all away.

Somewhere past the white circle gate,
my lungs
for an urn.
And her name
was Appalachia.