Where draglines once clawed at the mountain’s side,
And dozers shoved ridges away with pride,
The wind now wanders through young poplar trees,
And goldenrod bends in the autumn breeze.

The haul roads crack beneath the frost and rain,
No truck has thundered there for years again.
The tipple’s bones lie rusting in the weeds,
While black-eyed Susans bloom among the seeds.

A creek, once buried underneath the spoil,
Has found its voice beneath the rocky soil.
It sings through hollows no machine can tame,
As if the mountain never knew its name.

The deer return at dusk to softly feed,
Wild turkey scratch where coal was once the need.
A fox slips silent through the sumac red,
And nests of songbirds crown the benches spread.

The miners’ labor lingers in the stone,
Their sweat and sacrifice forever known.
Yet nature, patient as the turning years,
Has healed the wounds and weathered all the tears.

For mountains hold a stubborn kind of grace;
They bend, but time restores their weathered face.
Though men may carve and carry wealth away,
The forest waits to claim another day.

And standing there beneath the evening sky,
You’d scarcely know the mountain had to die.
For life has draped her shoulders green once more—

The mountain remembers,
but the wild forgives.