Where Marrowbone winds through the mountain’s side,
Like an old hymn soft on the breeze,
The creek keeps time with the years gone by,
Beneath sycamores and trees.

The fog rolls low through the morning light,
Till the ridges awaken in gold,
And every stone on the worn-out road
Has a hundred stories told.

There were men with faces black as night,
Coming home from the coal beneath,
Their laughter rose through the supper smoke,
Though dust still clung to their teeth.

The whistle sang from the tipple high,
Calling daylight into toil,
While mothers prayed on weathered porches
For sons beneath the soil.

Old churches stand where the valleys bend,
White steeples against the sky,
Where voices gather on Sunday morn,
And old amens never die.

The songs they sang still haunt these hills,
Though the pews have grown more spare;
For faith, like laurel upon the ridge,
Still blossoms everywhere.

The mines grew quiet, the rails grew cold,
And many a child moved west,
Searching cities for steadier pay,
Leaving home inside their chest.

Yet every autumn the maples blaze,
Like fires no rain can drown,
Calling wandering hearts back home
To little Marrowbone town.

For mountains measure a richer wealth
Than dollars ever could own;
They count in memories, kinfolk’s names,
And fields where the seeds were sown.

So long as the creek keeps carving stone,
And whippoorwills still sing,
Marrowbone will live in the souls of those
Who call these hills their spring.

Though the world may pass it by in haste,
And strangers never know,
There’s a kingdom tucked between these ridges
Where mountain people grow.

And if one day these hills should ask
What legacy we’ve shown,
May they whisper gently through the pines:

“They loved this place called Marrowbone.”