To the Mountains

Vast and rolling ancient hills of smoke
The drifting steam of cobweb dreams
Weaves a web between your green
And wraps around your shoulders like a cloak

The pink of dawn upon your rosy cheeks
Rests there like a maiden’s blush
Painted by exquisite celestial brush
Through your veins wind tiny streams and creeks

Rise like mother’s bosom; breath and heartbeat
Teats where I was suckled as a child
Nourishment that made me free and wild
Your wandering paths were velvet on my feet

Perfumed musk of early woodland dawn
Drifts through branches; intoxicating
Drawing the traveler deeper; waiting
Smell of wood and moss and leaf and loam

Lichens, mushrooms, ginseng growing
Laurels thick as honey round the lake
Birds sing to the music that you make
Your arms are full of history and knowing

Oldest, grandest mountains of the earth
Not so high that you are cold and bare
Pioneer settlers raised their children there
Mothers offered offspring from their birth

To play in the woods with Cherokee friends
They were here three thousand years
Until the infamous trail of tears
And whites replaced the noble Indian

Daniel Boone fished and hunted these trails
Before the signing of the Declaration
Before the war that helped to build a nation
Legends and heroes walked among your hills

Though much is recorded in history
Collected in eddies like swirling foam
Bubbles resting green and white as home
Fade into abstraction and mystery

Snows of more than a million winters past
Have melted into your flesh and bone
The bones of men who died lost and alone
Are cradled in your loving arms at last

More beautiful than gentle in your fashion
Glorious are your vistas in the dew
Mountain mornings make all things new
How I love you my dear Appalachians