Appalachia has not adopted me. 

It has grafted me into its bark. 
Severe as the mountain ridge my heart has become. 
The French Broad River circulates my blood.

Walking the Poplar forest has sweat the limestone dust off this Texan’s back.
Paint Creek has bathed the salt sand from my feet.

Eating of the land has made me forgetful of a time I bought what I now grow.

Chanterelles have spread their mycelium through my nervous system so when my bare toes touch black mulch the whole forest knows me for a friend.

My ankles are brushed with cool fern caresses.

The whippoorwill calls salutations.

An ethereal paramour is capricious to the extreme.

Glancing off the pines my unseen lover brushes the hairs on the back of my neck.

When my cabin door closes, the tin roof shakes with her savage fury.

She has torn it off to reach me.

Moonlight drips down from heaven onto mist, flows over Meadow Creek Mountain, and into my eyes.
I see when the lights go out. 
 
Away from my mountain shelter to visit family.

I am a refugee in a hostile land where I cannot speak the native tongue.
I have been grafted. 
I now speak my Mother tongue.