High County Psalm

Appalachian mountains roll across the horizon
like a recitation of the psalms,
bearing you up into stillness and peace,
into something of the eternal,
the sacred and mysterious,
a place formed by the hand of God
before mankind plotted and quarried
this rare Earth we were given.

Up here, on the bare rock ledges and stony summits,
we see the land rolling out like the waves
In a wave tormented sea,
and we have to marvel at how that almighty hand
Calmed the storms of the Earth's foundations,
Smoothing out the basalt and granite
Born through the ancient collision of continents
Into these sculptures studding this garden of Eden.

The very ground under our feet,
lying for milleniums beneath the sea,
buckled up into the sky, they say,
at the coming together of Africa and North America.
Then scalpels of rain and wind, gravity itself,
chiseled and cut, ground and smoothed down
rough outlines into this magnificent terrain.

Crouching mountain lions, perched eagles, sleeping bears,
the old bones of grandfathers and grandmothers
with their tired faces turned up to the stars,
lying down into their final resting places.

The sculptures of God for us to contemplate
in some giant, wild sculpture garden,
on an old, rock chimney of a summit.