Up the holler

Up the holler 

John Clare Stokes

So grateful in the fall of twenty twelve

We were able to take mamma to see

The old holler where she came to be

As we rode to Crumpler she would tell

now that was where Evelyn and I 

took that poor snake and burnt it

And there is where we paid with script

Where up Crumpler Mountain we’d slip

There’s the Methodist Church where Rev Looney

first suggested I should attend Asbury

Where Luke and I were later married

Where Gerald always held in my heart a tune

The old whistle post just beyond the church

Still towered rusting, once calling miners home

Out from the Pocahontas hills into the stucco homes

Or roused at night, the wailing telling that deep down something

had gone terribly wrong

Turning to return to Bluefield then Princeton

Rounding slowly another steep switch back

In my imagination I could clearly see

Her daddy’s bus full of miners and one

found kitty named Black Daisy

Bringing it home for his sweet Clara Jean.