Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born and raised in West Virginia now living in The Wilds of Pennsylvania. Once born in Appalachia, you never live any place else in your heart.
Returning
I have recycled myself back to where
I began, a hillside outside of Morgantown
where I learned of woods and fishing
in ponds and butchering cows, dehorning
them and baling hay. And the stories
of hunting from an uncle and grandfather
and an aunt’s boyfriend, learning to fish
in Oil Creek, the Allegheny and taking up
the bow and the gun and fishing pole as
I became a man. And now I am a middle-aged
old man living on a hillside alone hunting
and fishing, reading and writing, giving an
occasional poetry reading. Maybe I have not
recycled myself but come full circle. You know –
“In my end is my beginning, in my beginning my end.”
From one hillside to another.
