Appalachia

(x = space)

Death Toll in Kentucky

I am from there

I am from other places

Doesn’t matter

I don’t need to know

The topography

The lay of the land

The floods have happened

People have died

Many things are ruined

The count continues

While the water rules

And there’s no good way through

Forgotten parts of the world

Except in songs

Shows from NPR

There are storms, I know

And people die

And land is ruined

These people are one by one

Discovered

And remembered

There are stories

There will be more

And we should be grateful

Some places might rise

When dry

Some remain below

In hollow places

In the Earth

Inhabited

Uninhabited

For ages

The hollers

Remembered

Unremembered

We can only hope

All the counting

Numbers and greater meaning

And their stories

C L Couch

Kentucky Flooding Death Toll Rises to 37 as Governor Says Hundreds Remain Unaccounted for

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/01/weather/kentucky-appalachia-flooding-monday/index.html

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

Services with Variants

(from Appalachia)

I wonder as I wander

Out under the sky

Why Jesus, my Jesus,

Did come down to die

For poor on’ry people

Like you and like I

I wonder as I wander

Out under the sky

And then the story can begin in

Earnest—the grammar’s bad:

What does that really matter,

When the bias is for long and

Almost painful, loving notes

Wrought in the words to send

Them over; all the o sounds and

The is like convict souls, once

Held then let go like winged

Enchantment, soar above the

Planet in the room, to wave

Like smoke around the beams

Above the Sunday evening

Gathering, like convicts bound

Whose chains are broken with

No expectation, words and

Notes released like birds once

Wrapped by keepers’ hands—

In flight now to know no other

Mission than the erring sky

And song of wonder-wandering

“I Wonder as I Wander” (Appalachia)

Words and Music collected by John Jacob Niles

Collected by John Jacob Niles in Murphy, [North Carolina,] in July 1933 from a young traveling evangelist Annie Morgan. According to Niles, he asked her to sing the song repeatedly until he had memorized it. It was published in his 1934 Songs of the Hill-Folk.

http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/i_wonder_as_i_wander.htm

and “on’ry” is ornery, which is a good word