I know a lot of mountain people who’ll leave home
for maybe 24 hours like they think they’re obliged
like they think they signed a contract but must
return ASAP is my point to lie flat on the ground
to slowly rub the Kentucky Bluegrass & even the
Hairy Bittergrass no matter the season or temperature
or state of general heath & weep almost a little
or a lot & sigh, which is how you learn what love is
in the Blue Ridge. How tied to the earth love is,
how like it’s where the chicken coop is
like love basically depends on the chicken coop
or just the shadow the chicken coop used to cast
now that the chicken coop has been eliminated
like the ghost of the chicken coop stains the ambiance
like love’s a hurricane of feathers & beating hearts
& livers & eggs & nesting boxes & gristle & blood
flying everywhere with that fox in the spirit-coop
with us too biting us together by biting us to time
& to the air & the wind & the limestone itself
as to a grave-esque void that is not a void
so much as a bawdy richness & a tenderness
& even a roundness or a weird oneness
that is also potentially sentimental I know
but is meanwhile also a wholeness, is my point,
& a holiness. Meaning we know where home is
as in where the wholes are. Meaning how
to enter them & what they’re made of & how
to dwell in that hovel & trounce it & fill it & stay.