Ever since I was young I always longed for home
Was it in a tall oak tree looking over the hill country
In a muddy pasture with horses
A small condo with a view of a bustling street
Or a large house in the suburbs

Each day chasing every tide.
Each wave languidly crashing  over my hair as it smells of sea salt and cold waters.
The dark clouds that take up the sky, full of mysteries and the crisp air.
Or maybe in a large empty field  with no one near, yellow and orange flowers around me as the sun beats down on my tan shoulders.

Maybe, in the bright star of Sirius, light years way.
Maybe in the cold rain dripping down my car window
Maybe in the barren trees.
Maybe in the warm dusty desert.
Maybe in the green mist of the Amazon
Or the heavy air of the Himalayans.

I’ll tell you something it’s not here.

The other night,
I dreamed of you and Katmandu.

It was of that first night in that
Guest House, where the seedy
proprietor tried to sell me the
12 year old Kitchen Girl for
20 US Dollars. And throw in
a small bag of Black Hash for free.
Then upon my refusal,
Lowered the price to Ten,
And again I told him no.

The place where the rat came,
up onto our bed and nearly,
ran across my head.
Where February winds threatened,
To blow the shutters in.
The smell of burning lamp fuel,
Fouling the stifling cold room air.
You insisting I not put out the light,
To prevent the rat's return.
That foreign place, the Himalayans base
That city, that cold room.

Our stomachs rumbled from the tainted
dinner rice and so called, chicken meat.
As always your feet like two popsicles,
In the bottom of our sleeping bag.  

Yet our bodies radiated a familiar heat,
The only civilized comfort of that night,
So very far away from home,
With you all wrapped up in my arms.

I have not thought,
Nor dreamed these things,
In over 35 years,
Visions no doubt lost among,
All the bitterness and tears.

And yet last night there they were,
Of you and me in our bed.
And I smiled at this,
Our shared and lost remembrance.

In the way of life the storms
will come again and again
But we'd take them away
by the punch of confidence
if the Himalayans prevent us.

Life has so many colorful dreams
The dam is disappointing them
But my thoughts and pen
will run away these poems,
It's not time to play the game of suicide!

We'll keep our feet on the ground
in the irritating fire anyway
We'll be brave in this world
because we are the younger generation
We believe in building a confident nation.

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.