Swimming the Allegheny River.
The Allegheny River is a beautiful river set in the heart of the Allegheny Mountains.
When I was a kid we would go camping at a camp site in the Allegheny forest.
My uncle would run his boat.
We would swim in the river almost all day long.
From one side to the other side, it was approximately 1 1/2 miles wide.
We would cross the river by swimming. At least three times a day.
So we swam the Allegheny River every year for about ten year.
Allegheny River in the heart of Pennsylvania a river of fun.

I waited today for a freight train to pass.
Cattle cars with steers butting their horns against the
     bars, went by.
And a half a dozen hoboes stood on bumpers between
     cars.
Well, the cattle are respectable, I thought.
Every steer has its transportation paid for by the farmer
     sending it to market,
While the hoboes are law-breakers in riding a railroad
     train without a ticket.
It reminded me of ten days I spent in the Allegheny
     County jail in Pittsburgh.
I got ten days even though I was a veteran of the
     Spanish-American war.
Cooped in the same cell with me was an old man, a
     bricklayer and a *****-fighter.
But it just happened he, too, was a veteran soldier, and
     he had fought to preserve the Union and free the
     *******.
We were three in all, the other being a Lithuanian who
     got drunk on pay day at the steel works and got to
     fighting a policeman;
All the clothes he had was a shirt, pants and shoes--
     somebody got his hat and coat and what money he
     had left over when he got drunk.

in the highlands, on top of a hill
it sits like a castle of broken will
closed for years, it's occupied still
by lowly souls who are unfulfilled

the chains and shackles redeem their pain
they rattle with rusty dying moans
the empty corridors scream in vain
these tortured souls are still alone

the ***** tables and ****** straps
can no longer hold the desperate minds
misery and death, in human traps
hands can't pray when tied in binds

they scream their stories into my ear
they show the scenes to my crying eyes
ghosts of doom, torture, and fear
stuck in between, where angels never fly

in the highlands, on top of a hill
it sits like a castle of broken will
closed for years, it's occupied still
by lowly souls who are unfulfilled

Along the shore of the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh
a little girl of about seven, dressed in a track suit
threw chunks of bread to nearby ducks and geese.
The geese, twice the size of their mallard brethren,
aggressively pushed between the ducks
to gobble up each morsel.
The girl placed her hands on her hips
and scolded the winged despots for their greed.
A few of the ducks joined in the protest,
and quacked in solidarity, for justice.
The geese remained undeterred in their conquest.
Clearly frustrated, the little girl gave up.
She handed the bag of bread to her mother
and then ran off to join a group of older children
playing frisbee in a nearby grass field.
The ruling geese and the victimized ducks
continued to swim near the shore,
hungry and confused,
and without that reliable food source.

The catamount,
It does appear,
From our fair commonwealth
Has disappeared,
It's just as gone
As gone can be.
Just as the state
Environment folk,
They'll tell you
It's extinct in our fair land.
As is the Nittany Lion,
From its home
Of Pennsylvania.
They say the only Nittany Lion left
Is frozen in perpetual leap
Outside the Penn State football field.
And as a proof,
Her moaning call
Is heard no more
Throughout the Pennsylvania mounts.
We've slain those big cats
One and all
From the Allegheny
To the Blue Ridge.
So when a giant cat
Stretched herself full out
Before our car
Just to cross the street
At the time of her desire,
Not one moment sooner,
Nor one moment later,
We might have almost hit a ghost
But she didn't stick around
To tell us who she was.
The great cat speaks not,
But goes about her business,
If she's there,
And if she's not,
What the heck was that
That crossed the road?

olney transportation center.

i put my bag down in the plastic seat next to me and allow the cool musty subway air envelope my senses. the lights are too fluorescent, **** they’re bright. my chest fills with pressure, the cap at my throat holding on desperately to stay put, stay tight. don’t scream. my breath is getting harder now. why do they even hang out with that person? it doesn’t make sense to me. my music gets louder in my ears, smooth bossa nova pounding brain waves. focus on the lyrics. they make me too angry. my lungs are struggling to hang onto the air, it’s coming in and out of my nostrils too fast. my throat is getting too dry, but my water bottle is too heavy. i don’t want to pick it up, i want to keep thinking. why won’t they just listen to me? why won’t they see things my way? how long is this song? it seems like it’s been forever. i’ve passed galaxies and worlds in this subway tunnel, the stars too fast for my eyes to grasp. i can’t think my way out of this one. no amount of thoughts flying around my head can fix the necessity of simply doing nothing. my hand is forced to be empty. i need to bluff. it’s way too bright in here.

logan.

thank god this song is over. i’m going to do homework instead. i don’t like this song very much, but i’m not going to change it. maybe i should turn off the music so i can read better.

wyoming.
hunting park.
erie.
allegheny.

i think i’ll be home soon. i don’t like what they did today, i should listen to my mom more. my eyes are really heavy, i wish i went to bed earlier today. maybe i’ll take a nap when i get home.

susquehanna dauphin.
cecil b. moore.

i don’t like this stop today.

girard.

time is back up to speed. maybe i’ll go to chinatown, buy some moon cakes. the mid autumn festival passed already, i wish i could’ve gone. i don’t really care for half of the things i say i like. maybe it’s a labor of love, to lie about liking something. or maybe i just don’t have the ability to say i don’t like something. but i know i dislike things. i dislike how bright these lights are, ****. my migraine is getting stronger. i want to go home. i am going home.

fairmount.

my throat feels like a desert. time to put my phone down. my head hurts too much.

i.

Such is their reward, then,
This graceful bridge bisecting the lake at Bemus Point,
Not far from the spot where Bishop Vincent
Parsed the geography of the holy land,
Narrow beaches fronting a higgledy-piggledy of cottages,
Most comfortable but staid,
Though the odd McMansion grotesquerie
Has sprouted here and there,
Courtesy of some frozen-food magnate in Buffalo
Or casino second-in-command from Niagara Falls
(Those more famous waters, apparently,
Insufficient to slake ones thirst for the gaudy)
In any case, likely no more than admired from afar
By those generations of boys
Who, leaving their spot on the line at Crescent Tools
Or fields rife with bumble-striped heifers,
Never returned, drill press unmanned, corn crib unattended.

ii.

You’d been on those waters once, however,
Spending an afternoon both bewitching and idyllic
On a dock fronting a relatively humble beach bungalow
(A friend of a family friend or relative’s place,
The whos and whys lost to the manila folders of recollection)
With a girl of ten, perhaps twelve at the outside,
Beautiful in an untrammeled manner,
Or at least primarily, unconsciously so,
And you remember her having green eyes
Which utterly belied description
(Though that was all long ago,
Such reminiscence likely no more than the rheuminess of memory,
And you have not returned to that shoreline since.)

iii.

Such daydreams are perilous, on many levels,
At seventy miles per hour even more so,
And you shake yourself back to the present
While approaching yet another bridge
(Humble span noting humble beginnings)
Honoring the region’s most famous daughter and her husband,
Who did indeed have much ‘splaining to do,
As you proceed eastbound toward Salamanca
(Wholly owned by the Seneca Nation,
Those non-native descendants of Mertzes and McGillicuddys
Paying rent and fealty to the tribe each year)
And thence to the slump-shouldered hills
Which shelter the sauntering Allegheny,
The pines thick, green, inscrutable,
Beyond our everday squabbles,
Answerable to nothing but time itself.

My bold peridot grassland jewel ...Wrapped in a golden band of Allegheny sunlight , covered in Montana blue dreams .....
I see her bold outlines , the face of Obsidian mingled within White Pine , suspended in lavender horizons , sailing eastward to sea ..

10 pm in front of Chipotle
and you said, this is my [rusty] Chevy [something],
which had a radio that played exceptional static
for us to tune out on the trek to Mount Washington.

It was raining, but we had already driven all that way
and so we stood outside anyways
in the low hanging clouds above Pittsburgh.

I said, I’ve never been on a date
         with a girl      before.

And you said, is it everything you thought it’d be?
And with that

we decided to see who could throw a rock the farthest
[which you won]
and who could name more constellations
[which nobody won, because there
were no stars in sight on that Tuesday night].

Then the couple next to us left
and a new one arrived
and the blanket of fog temporarily lifted
to reveal the UPMC logo.

We watched as the number of tiny office lights
diminished, looking a little bit like an end of the world
power outage in slow motion—

and we silently shrunk in the weight of the moment
as the Earth turned and dragged the seconds along,
and the water of the Allegheny and Monongahela
merged into the Ohio the way our bodies connected at the hands;
two posterchildlesbians showing a city
how
         to
                     fall
                                 in love.

The Moment
by Ryan P. Kinney

The Japanese girl sits quietly on the pier
Gazing out over the water
Her silence and knowing glance says more
Than either of our languages could ever comprehend
She is beautiful in her hopelessness
And I, dumbstruck in awe of a peace I will never know

She sits behind me squawking with an adolescent banter that must seem dire
Her intensity of voice speaks the same thing I had secretly wished for years, but been too afraid to say
“Please pay attention to me.”
Speak, I did, for the very first time
This awkward message of youthful adoration is not exactly communicated articulately
Her only response is, “God, I hate you. Please shut up.”
If I am already taking risks with my life, then I will not be silenced
For once, I will not back down
“You love me. You just don’t know it yet.”

We are inexplicably sat on the very edge of the river
The smell of Texas BBQ intensifying our hunger
Half of our small group is exhausted proving their technical prowess
When I declare that this most manly of feasts
Must be a competition to prove our testosterone
Why simply dine in San Antonio
When you can challenge your friends to a banquet of sauce laden meats
I declare that he who finishes least or last
Must surrender his manhood
The ***** are on the table this night

I awoke early this morning
And slipped quietly out of my bunk.
My compatriots were still sleeping off a hangover
I push open the door hundreds of years my senior
And witness the burgundy sunset of French wine country
Just think, right now I could be mindlessly staring at rolling machinery

I place another valve on the pump and
WHIRRR...
Hypnotically tighten it down
The sound has become a meditation now
The zen is broken when my radio squeals
The producer has just jumped on the air
“The World Trade Center is on fire.”
I place my wrench slowly down on the table... Confused
We all do.
We all are.
In a half hour we will all be sitting around the table
Listening to Howard Stern speculate on a horror
We are blinded to the true terror, what this really means...
Until hours later.

Snow continues to flood my windshield as I wind precariously around the bespeckled Allegheny’s
The city below, shrouded in the early winter night
Looks as though the heavens have finally released the weight of the stars to the ground
As I marvel at this, a twinge of fear arises
I may not find shelter tonight
Nonetheless, the roads level out and an exit is offered as salvation
In the midst of planned itineraries, sightseeing, and tourist attractions I had lost track of time
I am resigned to sleep the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot
When I pull off the exit, however,
I am pleased to see the welcoming glow of a mall
There I discover an establishment long since lost to the ether of my youth
As I sit there, eating the 10,000 calorie hot dog I ponder,
“This is what life was like when it was simpler, when I thought I knew what it was all about,
Before I was proven horribly wrong.”

In the midst of the audacious and elaborate splendor of Florence
I see a sight a sight so simple
And yet so much more a monument to man’s unfathomable capacity for love and compassion
A rose, brown and dead, is stuck in a chain link fence
Attached to it is a small hand-written note that reads,
“Kiss her now”

I am in her arms
Having been told, “No”
And resigned to rejection so many times
So many times I told myself that this would never happen
As my lips touch hers
I laugh inside my head
“Is this really happening?”
This is really happening

I hold my breathe
I can see him through the window
As I have seen him through the electronic window of my TV for years
As I get closer this feels less and less real
This is my hero
My God
He has accomplished amazing things
And pushed the limits of the human body
Suddenly, I am in front of him
He looks up, and smiles, as he says hello
All the nervousness, the anxiety disappears
When I realize that my God is a man
A man like me

I am terrified
Before me is a discolored, screaming, clawing, misshapen alien creature
My son takes his first breathes of real air
We are all exhausted
His mother looks at me with a look that practically screams,
“We did it.”
I plead, “But, we’re not done doing it yet...
Are we?”
His gurgles turn into cries
And I know...
I know that this,
This is the moment that matters more than any in my life
I will never have a single instant matter anymore than this ever will...

And while I stare into his bed
I hope he proves me wrong.

I've been traveling,
Trying to return to my roots,
So return I did,
Returned to the woods,
That carpet the mountains of the Appalachian.

Up the mountains I climbed,
An old rifle slung across my back,
Boonie cap keeping eyes free from the harsh glare of the sun as it filters through the canopy above
Trying to find on the mountain that I've been lacking in the North..

Wildlife is active all around,
A breeze is flowing up the mountain,
Whisking the settling heat up and past the peak,
My footfalls soft and sure.
I come across old trails I haven't seen in years,
Mostly washed away and rendered impassible.
On the eastern face I find the remnants of a forest fire.
The field that once held nothing but cinders littered with healthy saplings,
Already taller than I,
New deer trails and bedding areas,
The old ones I discover to be abandoned and the new roost of varmint.

It finally strikes me,
As I descend off of the old mountain,
The truth of what it was I lacked,
I fell into the trap that ensnare many a men down in the South.

The trap that the Mountains lay,
From the Adirondacks to the Allegheny,
Of being a timeless place,
Where you are unplugged from the rest of the world,
And everything is simpler,
It's a trap that had not chains to wrap around arms and legs,
But to encase around the mind.

It is easier to leave than last time,
For I know I shall return,
To this little retreat,
In the Daniel Boone National Forest.

Static cracks in a dormant station
as I pass through Allegheny mountains

Panic stacks a weight substantial
upon a boy devoid of answers

Brain attacking body
as we long to hear the stories once more

Paint the city and the peace corps
with softly spoken words adored

Fleeting brilliance casts an umbra
upon a man divest of function

Still resilient, sister and I
we slowly heal our hearts in time

Stronger now we look ahead
in time we'll find the answers yet

WHERE THEY AIN'T
( for Kyle )


The sea was drowning
in men


strings of soldiers
like a macabre daisy chain


floating together...a human seaweed
the tide turning red


machine gun fire
stinging the water


so that the waves leapt up
like men of water

mimicking the terror
of our flesh our blood

"JesusJesusJesus!"
I kept hearing myself


saying as if I
wasn't me.


Gramps woulda killed me
for taking the Good Name in vain.


Guess I ain't in Omaha  no more.


An officer torn in two
bullets ripping across his torso

tearing along  the dotted line
like he was a special offer


as easy as that…as easy as that.

One moment you're here
the next...not.


Keep hearing Gramps
talking to me in my head.


"Keep your eye clear..."
as he'd always say


no matter what
the situation or occasion


"...and hit 'em
where they ain't!"


But life ain't always
as clear cut as a baseball game.


And I could never bat for nuts.

I rattled off the names
of the teams of then

to drown out the death rattle
of machine guns...dying men.


"Cleavland Spiders
Trolley Doddgers
Sioux City Cornhuskers
Boston Beaneaters
Allegheny Innocents
Bronx Bombers!"


"Jesus couldn't remember
Jesus Jesus what was


the name of the Yankees
before they was the Yankees?"


Now I was
chanting them like a charm

to ward off fear and death
names  V.  bullets.


Some guys mown down
even as the ramp hit the water


most guys dying
soon as they hit the water


only making it to the shore
as corpses.


"Don't wanna be dead…don't wanna be dead!"


A kid Jesus just a kid
screaming hysterically


just before he got it
in the head.


His gore splattered
all over me.


"Orioles...Orioles...Orioles!"
I keep chanting to my self


always loved
the sound of the word.


The Germans in their pillboxes
keeping the score


more of us dead
than living now.

I get it in the leg - then the other leg.
Crawl into a hole until nightfall.


Live to tell the tale.
So many many didn't.


Pretending I am
seeing with Gramps' eyes.


Wee Willie peerless place hitter of 1903
the little fellow…the big guy


facing the twirlers fearlessly.


"Always keep a clean eye..."

Gramps says
to the kid I was


"...and hit 'em…hit 'em
...where they ain't

These-famous words were spoken by an early 1900s American baseball player named "Wee" Willie Keeler. Keeler was short in stature but had a phenomenal record at the plate, hitting over .300 in 16 of his 19 major league seasons. When asked about his success, his response and advice to other hitters was simply: "Keep your eye clear, and hit 'em where they ain't."

There is a point I come to every day on my walk to work. An outlook, messed and marked by tall grass and weeds. You can see beyond the valley there, to the low rolling mountains of the Allegheny. Sometimes when the sky is just right, you can even see the smoke stacks of the power plant near my old home.

Most days, I pass by this vista.
I can't bear to look it in the eye.
It reminds me of the wideness of the world, the fear that touches me when I speak of leaving. The dreams that I have spent like breath - time and again - departure from this life.
To leave the job that kills, the friends who've forgotten, the lover who cannot remember how to love.

Most days I walk past.
I will not lift my head.
But the vast emptiness of the space between me and the world, the openness, the cold and absence of safety, with no promise of home... it calls to me.

Like the angry seas to young sailors, it cries my name. Something unsure. Something more.
Something that will nurse, something that will drown.

It beats me down.

And I will let it beat me til I break.

(BLT challenge: song titles from one singer)

This is the story of THE STRANGEST ROMANCE I ever encountered.
It didn’t involve me because I was then TOO YOUNG TO GO STEADY. I  hadn’t even purchased my FIRST FORMAL GOWN yet.  MOST PEOPLE GET MARRIED, under the ALLEGHENY MOON in this part of the country, but this couple said no to that. I kept telling them to GO ON WITH THE WEDDING, but they insisted it would be ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE.  I then suggested OLD CAPE COD, but they said THE WALL has ears, and if anyone found out they were eloping, it would be GOODBYE CHARLIE. I told them to TRUST IN ME and I wasn’t FIBBIN’ when I said it.  They said: REPEAT AFTER ME: “I’LL  REMEMBER TODAY and keep your secret. I swear this on a CROSS OF GOLD”
Swearing on a gold cross made my heart go PIDDLY PATTER PATTER and I now felt like WITH MY EYES WIDE OPEN I’M DREAMING.  They told me to HUSH, HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE, and to GO ON HOME.  
I had my Walk-man on, so I trudged home with THE SOUND OF MUSIC in my ears, but the walk seemed like TWO THOUSAND, TWO HUNDRED, TWENTY THREE MILES, and as I thought about their rejection of me,  I WISH I’D NEVER BEEN BORN.  Being brushed aside like that left me with A BROKEN HEART AND A PILLOW FILLED WITH TEARS.
EVERY TIME I think about that day, I want to throw MAMA FROM THE TRAIN for not letting me even go to their wedding when it finally happened.  I had kept their secret and told no one.  I’m proud of me.
                              ljm

It has been long since decommissioned and closed to traffic,
The borough choosing not to replace it,
Simply dead-ending the road at its foot,
And most of the populace, casting a wary eye
Upon the crumbling, moss-dappled abutments,
Deign it unwise to walk upon it as well.
He is there most every day,
Regardless of, and perhaps oblivious to,
The meteorological particulars of the moment,
January no different from June or November.
He is, on the odd occasion,
Not the sole visitor to the clanking anachronism:
There are children whom he regards
With a grandfatherly solicitude
Or a well-practiced gruff wariness,
Depending on the age and attitude of the cherub in question,
Young lovers treated with a studious indifference,
Allowing them time and space to trod their well-worn paths,
The occasional generational fellow-traveler,
Stopping by for a brief and mutually proscribed interval,
Each knowing one does not come to such places
For indeterminate and interminable idle chit-chat,
And in any case, they would know there things to be considered,
As he has married and buried,
Has celebrated his muted victories, mourned his plebeian losses,
Accepted his compromises and allowances,
And sometimes he will note the small plaque on one beam,
Noting the bridge's origin in New York's Finger Lakes,
Where benign glaciers made burbling inlets
Emptying into lakes which end up nowhere,
And he will find an odd comfort in the notion
That the sluggish brown old creek flows into the Clarion,
And thence to the Allegheny and Ohio
Likewise the Mississippi and onward to the ocean,
Part and parcel of all things once and forever, amen.

An excerpt taken from a lengthy tome,
written courtesy a favorite poet of mine.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia  struck within a blink,
I swear yours truly never took a drink,
nevertheless he witnessed
and falsely accused of being a rat fink,
when everything but the kitchen sink
instantaneously disappeared in a wink.

A quick moving flava flav lava flow
quickly rapped (like a snoop doggy dog tune),
swept, and twittered predominantly
(this only the beginning phase
of Armageddon clobbering debacle),
where nature nymphs, sprites, trolls, et cetera)
decked out with tartan kilted
Scottish residents comprising
the moral majority population
within bucolic community of Harrisburg,
(yes the same place name and Das Capital
of Pennsylvania) before swallowing
(as an itty bitty, teensy weensy
hors d oeuvre), a healthy
barley noticed portion of planet Earth.

Faster than a speeding bullet
lubricated with greased lightning,
and one rather extremely uncommon phenomena,
the devastating, instantaneous,
and outrageous volcanic activity,
(that forged the Allegheny Mountains)
unexpectedly goose-stepped,
doggedly catapulted back to life
after a bajillion years of dormancy
entombing, hotly freezing (in perpetuity),

and guaranteeing, limning, and ossifying
unchanging lifelong livingsocial abode
of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum
at that juncture (of happy and healthy)
within the space time continuum
4 after Midnight, (when Christine
came down with severe bout of misery
qua writer's block), and sponsored
by Plexus, nexus Lexus Wilkie Buick,
who guaranteed their

handsomely crafted automobiles
(specially designed with an app
to weather fierce blistering,
pelting thermal withering geologic events,
sans natural catastrophes)
included extra durable crushed bougainvillea
(allegedly beefed chromosomes)
deftly effected fortified (gluten free)
genetically housed immensely
jimmied, kindled, lionized magnetized numbskulls.

The volcanic magma seemed to possess
an uncanny intelligent, eerie ability
to discriminate among bias,
die hard extremist stances, liberal take
on hot button controversial issues,
political ultra factions, hence the eye catching,
shining, yet confusing moniker
"Smart Ash" soon codified, fructified, indemnified
with the reputable, musical, and inestimable
qua personae non gratae prodigy Sam Ash".

Actually, there did seem to appear
some natural likeness in violent temperament,
resonant penchant, and nascent lambent
Jill Saint John habiliment
between former magmatic material,
and protean Primate prehensile prattling Simian,
who (as a sidereal stellar story teller)
happens to be yours truly.

Anyway, due to strict
parochial Lutheran hackneyed dogma,
no iota of boasting, flattering, nattering chattering
allowed from this anonymous,
hip po' eponymous, harmonious, industrious,
innocuous, judicious, loquacious, marvelous,
querulous Norwegian bachelor farmer.

Ponder with scrunched furrowed brow
in a serious effort to expound at large
this incredulous nebulous,
shape shifting (than compound
an understandably mixed up notion),
thus now tis a noteworthy opportunity
to point out divulging the name of this scribe
would immediately necessitate notification
of Non-Coms, who would forcibly usher
this lapsed long haired pencil neck geek.

This action (not newsworthy in the least),
would thus mocks nix notorious nauseating, nasty,
never-ending nonsensical noodling.

How sad, hence tis not wise tune hip
virtual thorn in the dark side.

Rather best bet would be to buffer end
this figurative bud dee **** encased
within corpus callosum.

Though identity guard disallows revealing namesake
of this nincompoop, the most information
told about this little known author
can be reduced to one word.

That abridged version would deprive
any subsequent reader a brave attempt
to interpret convoluted spaghetti writing.

Despite ambition to bob and weave continuously
(creating a conglomeration of ever increasing
virtual loose threads),
one final capstone concept begs to be conveyed.

Thine ziggurat severely atilt rivaled
(sorry tubby cheesy),
but the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

Asinine argot acquired bilious berserk baggage,
which stakes no claim nsync with
longevity, magnanimity, notoriety, et cetera.

A series of unfortunate literary,
lickity-split liberty unintentionally
left a prose ache wake.

An honest to dogness attempt bedeviled crux
displaying evident fiasco.

Slinky circumstances, sans synonymity,
synergistically, and synchronicity
yielded a feeble effort at fame.

Birth thing a complex mental edifice
begot aborted aspiration foray zing
grateful, mindful, and respectful characterization.

I want to ask the things that hurt but I don't want to pain you
I want to show you death, inert, but I couldn't restrain you
I want to give you what your worth, but I don't want to pay you
I wanna watch you swallow girth, fall through a hollow earth, catch cholera from dearth like a twisted ****** birth
and
Watch as I emerge, singing songs I call a dirge, where two or three of us converge, like sprouts of Allegheny spurge that there's no pesticide to purge and it is just a ****** urge that I can't seem to ******* scourge, something known to re-emerge to take my lungs and then submerge
Until
Until the blackness comes
and all is undone.

Your sound here in ears
Is peaks and valleys out west
In this eastern world
Hear the Allegheny sky
I'm myself, a wishing song