The Appalachians exist in their eroded presence,
peaks grinded  down to almost lower hills,
erasing the mountains once majesty
to a smoothing, a faded promise
of God lost in time’s neglect,
barely seen in flyover.

These mature mountains once outreached the Himalayans,
the younger brother barely beyond its grasping infancy-
(older even than the dozen watery icy rings of Saturn)
ceding  a layer of itself every natural  millennium,
to the red oaks and pines that rule its base.

These crags once knew the seasons when the flowers died
but now know  only black bear, white-tailed deer,
wild boar, fox, raccoon, and  ******, below;
the golden eagles, ravens in the cliffs—
the schoolchildren,  hikers, climbers
who wander its ancient trails,
seeking  the orology of  stone  
vanished in decaying time.

It’s Brown Mountain Lights hold tantalizing  human mysteries-
unexplained orbs drifting through shadowed peaks,
silently piercing the fear veil of the mortal  mind,
whispering ghostly rumors through the pines,
ethereal terrors shrieking down the cliffs,
a secret eternally lingering in its air.

The Cherokee call this sacred sinister Land of Blue Smoke Shaconage-
made by the giant hawk Tawodi wearily circling a flooded earth
which plummeted to the ground in exhaustion.
Where its vast wings hit Elohi (earth)
the mountain valleys appeared.  

Now the Appalachian twilight whisper echoes of Wampus Cats
patrolling the woods, protecting with legend the mountains
from the minds destruction that  broods beyond itself.
The mothman watches from the Tennessee’s edge,
its wings unfurling in the foreboding dimness,
a silent sentinel guarding present and past.
From the other bank Old Joe Clark fiddles
his mournful tune of abandoned paths
and forgotten times.