West Virginia

The hazy golden light of my childhood afternoons

Filters through leaves and years to tint my memory.

I sprung from a green place.

There, nature's ubiquity forced men to carve their lines

Out of ever-encroaching forest.

Tractors, lawn mowers,

Brush hogs, back-hoes,

Outsize drills, and dynamite

Are no match for the insistent thrum

Of peat and springs and wood and lichen.

Entire towns devoured by grass and clover