Appalachian Spring

By Bob Henry Baber / January 1, 1982

Appalachia mountains

This article originally appeared in Southern Exposure Vol. 10 No. 1, "Who Owns Appalachia?" Find more from that issue here.

(pay water bills here)

In this occupied territory

made war upon,

terrorists set blasts

making mole hills out of mountains —

six-weeks-till-frost

and Jack-in-the-Pulpit

supplanted by Sericea lespedeza.

 

*****

 

Stripped of recourse the rivers succumb

surrender rags hung from flood

till dogwood bloom —

 

for every kickback, a kick.

 

*****

 

Blood splashes on bark

mark the lines of demarcation —

the backside of glazed gob pile

no buffer of trees can mask

looming ever ready

to bequest its over burdened truth

next rain —

 

peaks above

falling prey to dozers

driven by kin

against their wills.

 

— Bob Henry Baber

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Bob Henry Baber

Bob Henry Baber is a West Virginia poet and one of the founders of the Southern Appalachian Writers’ Cooperative SA WCJ. He is consulting director of the Appalachian Poetry Project. (1982)

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