Sometimes the Mist of the Mountains

Country spirit
healer of small hearts

teach the children of Adam

lost in mountain grass

the old ways.

Hold them with folk tale memories

and grandma’s quilts and read them

Whitman when they are young.

Wrapped in fields of wild white Indigo

you wait in blue mist mornings.

Red dirt roads point

the path with dogwoods

and scattered glades

leading to the porch.

Tonight whippoorwills

echo your cry

hickory smoke spreads out

layering the holler

below the Appalachian stars

shooting across a blackberry sky.