The Edge of Appalachia

My home and a now distant womb.
You spun me out of clay, fed me cicadas, garlic and wrinkled love
then sent me out of town with a naive broken posture 
holding something new and warm in my chest.
You’re quiet 
and old
and your herb gardens and midnight coyotes keep your kids alive and strange.
There’s a version of heaven in your bluer sides where
even a hell bent villain can hate the world in peace.
But the peace I found, was on your river banks and mountainsides,
always crumbling under my youthful stampeding, 
as I’d rip slate-like scales from your skin and roll them down your spine,
aiming for the trees that littered your back.
A rude awakening from their million year slumber–
and an eye for an eye I suppose.

I’d lay in your creek beds watching the Kingfisher wars,
and the mayflies add their plastic-like glitter to the leaves.
That ineffable harmony would hold me until the quiet gravity would start to squeeze.
I’d scuttle away, confident the Daddy Long Legs would point me home. 
Home to the top of the ridge where my lonely cabin stood
lit up with an evening glow as if she were getting ready for love.
Window art and wind chimes clung to her like children and sang for her like birds.
Her doors and windows opened like wings,
letting the breeze swim through her skeleton as an old river does, searching for a sea.
I’d stand alone there watching the outside come in,
feeling the breath of it all.
Feeling the small of me as the world filled the room.
Time can stop there; on the Edge of Appalachia
in errant gusts of stars and pollen
and it locks a part of you in place, 
smiling through rain filled eyes 
taking the last good breath of your life.