Counsel of Appalachia

There is a land where ancient ridges, standing,

have watched the centuries pass like morning rain,

where God seemed more than ordinarily commanding

when first he shaped those dark, tremendous chains.

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The mist rolls through the hollers, soft as sorrow,

the creek runs cold and clear as mercy given,

and those who wake to such a sacred morrow

find little cause to seek a nearer heaven.

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I have known of courts where silken banners, gleaming,

have dressed the halls of power and of pride,

where men have chased the gold of empty dreaming

and laid their truest natures long aside.

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Yet here among these dark and storied highlands

a different sovereignty has held its throne,

the dignity of those on life's rough islands

who claim no grace save what their souls have grown.

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The old man on the porch at dusk, still gazing

across the valley, purpling into shade,

who counts his wealth in embers slowly raising

and in the debts of love his people paid.

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He carries in his silence more than learning,

more than the polished volumes cities prize,

for in his face the long devotion, burning,

have written truths no scholar could devise.

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The daughter who has kept her mother's singing

alive through all the grinding years of want,

whose voice across the Sunday morning, ringing,

recalls the grace that hardship could not daunt.

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She is the vessel of a proud transmission,

more sovereign in her station than a queen,

for she has turned her sorrow to a mission

and kept the sacred lamp of memory keen.

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These peaks have stood through ruin and through glory,

through blood and grief and industry's harsh tide,

and every holler holds a human story

of those who suffered greatly, greatly tried.

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The coal-dark valleys bore their generations

through labour that would break a weaker soul,

yet still they sang, in all their tribulations,

of God and kin and that unvanquished place.

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So let the world pursue its restless seeking

through marble halls and fashionable years.

These mountains hold a covenant worth keeping,

more dear than all that glamour disappears.

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For Appalachia is no fading vision.

she is the bone and marrow of the free.

her people forged by poverty's hard tuition

into a strength the ages yet shall see.