Tag: Process_ON_Storyworth
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Rockhouse Holler
We’ll take a Sunday drive, but first, about “hollers” – they’re the little valleys, here in Appalachia, where creeks run. When the wagon roads first came into these hills they followed the creekbeds through the hills and we have roads now where the wagons or horses could navigate. But they could also trace a feeder…
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Spring Hill Cemetery
1. Walking on this hill of graves and trees I find the stone of Talitha beside the church now only used to mark the spring’s return of jonquils from the underworld. I stop to see her stone beside her mom’s, on no-one’s map. What bells that baby girl could surely laugh. 2. A hundred-forty Easters since that…
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Moonseed, Ampelopsis, Possumgrape
The sun withdraws its tide of liquid gold along the goldenrod, the sumac fronds by now November red (think blood, weeks old) and up the sharp-as-switches willow wands. Against the Appalachian dusk the gnats are lit like photon swarms above the ponds. My father parts the weeds to squint at slats in leaves — the…
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Elizabeth
Elizabeth, your ears were far from dull for in the first word Mary spoke you heard her silent child. (and so did John.) Elizabeth, your eyes were far from dim; you saw young Mary ripe with news and witnessed to the fullness of her womb before she told her secret. (so did John.) Elizabeth, your…
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A Bluebird For Barbara
You asked me why I’d chosen you.You hate to give or get a hollow gift,you said. You asked me how I knew the girl as gift who parked her truck to stalkthe raptors on the wires. It was my test.(We two still park to watch the red-tailed hawk.) And I remember how you wept…
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Back Mountain Road
Somewhere between Snowshoe Mountain and Cass Railroad in the West Virginia mountains is a two lane paved road you’ll miss unless you know what you’re looking for. “Back Mountain Road” winds for miles along the side of the ridge, looking down on red barns and gold hayricks. I drove it one August day looking…
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October 1961: The Wreck
October 1961: The Wreck I am five years old and looking down on my grandmother in her open and brightly-lit coffin. My father holds me up; I feel his strong hands in my armpits, and from behind me I hear him whisper “She died from a fractured skull.” He wants me to see her and to see…
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Gabriel’s Inhalation
Yoga class this evening. This makes my Christian people nervous. No, I don’t believe that some crazed Hindu god owns the lotus pose, any more than I believe Darwin owns the bones of the brachiosaur. In the end, most Christians in the pew are actually among those who, had they lived in Corinth, would have…
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Vanity, All is Vanity.
Isaac, I wrote this late one night when I was really tired in my heart. At the age of 55 I have to admit how little I understand about God or the world. I have no idea what He wants me to do. I’ve been lucky enough to have fallen in, at various times, with…
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Petercave Road
“We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time. “ Most Americans think West Virginia is the middle of nowhere. And most West Virginians think the little town of Wayne is the middle of nowhere. And the good people…