The Pull of Home

The mountain shadow settles deep upon the stubborn clay.

Roots burrow into darkness where the secret pulse of earth beats slow.

Here the hollers hold a weightless memory of winters spent inside the hearth of mountains.

I am fixed within this boundary, held by the heavy turning of the land.

The sap rises in the old wood and flows through my own blood as if I were a sapling braced against the wind.

My skin has taken the color of the path, a dull brown shade that matches the path leading up to the high ridge.

The wind sighs through the gaps between the timber.

It calls out in the voice of ancestors who remain beneath the sod, their bones mingling with the loam.

They are the dust that rises when the heat of noon bakes the ground.

They are the rain that cleanses the face of the rise.

I watch the sun slide behind the rolling swells.

Shadows stretch like giants across the garden patch where the corn stands tall.

Everything remains. Nothing moves except the slow migration of the light.

I am a part of this terrain; a living branch grafted to the oldest trunk.

My life belongs to the silence of the high gaps; the enduring patience of the summits that watch the seasons pass.

I remain inside the circle, bound by the familiar dirt, held fast by the pull of home.

No force can drag me from this place where my life grew roots.

I stand as part of the stillness, integrated with the rise and fall of the terrain, an anchored soul anchored to the very ground itself.