virtuoso
01-09-2015, 12:53 PM
Through the mountains of Appalachia
stand the rural shanties
in their rustic cloaks
of cankered rust and time
barns with peeling paint
and corroded clapboards
derogated of all utility
and the pomp of honorable burial
melding into the colloquial strata
and the architectural digest
Yet the aging casks
stripped of original contents
without any succor
have a wistful glare
as the worn covers
bare the embedded strands
of an agrarian ideal
Beneath the dry, crusty scales
between the tattered grooves
lie no mystical portents
for the savant to divine
or philosophical tenets
for the searching disciple
only a solemn treatise
of Protestant penury
A simple-minded itinerant
can stitch the twines
of subsistence family trees
whose fibrous roots are
firmly planted and furrowed
in the decaying embers
stand the rural shanties
in their rustic cloaks
of cankered rust and time
barns with peeling paint
and corroded clapboards
derogated of all utility
and the pomp of honorable burial
melding into the colloquial strata
and the architectural digest
Yet the aging casks
stripped of original contents
without any succor
have a wistful glare
as the worn covers
bare the embedded strands
of an agrarian ideal
Beneath the dry, crusty scales
between the tattered grooves
lie no mystical portents
for the savant to divine
or philosophical tenets
for the searching disciple
only a solemn treatise
of Protestant penury
A simple-minded itinerant
can stitch the twines
of subsistence family trees
whose fibrous roots are
firmly planted and furrowed
in the decaying embers