The mountains never learned to read,
Yet somehow speak in flawless rhyme;
They carve their verses into stone
And measure truth instead of time.

Each winding creek recalls a tale
The oldest sycamores still know,
Where every ripple hums a line
That only patient hearts can sow.

A widow’s song on weathered steps,
A miner’s prayer before first light,
The fiddle dancing through the dusk,
The whip-poor-will that greets the night—

These are the books the ridges keep,
Bound not in leather, ink, or glue,
But stitched with calloused working hands
And skies forever washed in blue.

Here poems rise like chimney smoke,
They drift from porches after rain;
They gather where the beans are strung
And settle softly in the grain.

A Granny’s tales, a Papaw’s laugh,
The gospel sung in country keys,
The hush before a thunderstorm,
The whispered names among the trees—

Each moment finds a waiting page,
Though none may ever hold a pen;
For poetry has always lived
Within the voices of these glens.

It hides inside the blackbird’s call,
The coal dust clinging to a sleeve,
The crimson blaze of maple hills,
The frost that crowns October’s eve.

It blooms where wild trilliums grow,
Where faith outlives the hardest years,
Where hope keeps mending broken roads
With equal measures sweat and tears.

So if you seek Appalachian verse,
Don’t search the shelves alone one day;
Stand still where ancient mountains breathe
And let the silence have its say.

For every ridge’s weathered face,
Each hollow wrapped in morning dew,
Has spent a thousand patient years
Composing poems older than you.

And every soul who calls it home—
Whether they write or simply live—
Adds one more stanza to the song
These steadfast mountains always give.