I've heard hollers are called such (3/25)

I've heard hollers are called such 
because of the men that holler at your New York State license plate
as your car pants up the curves of a busty mountain
Hearsay is bourbon for bias
like my prejudice of the dark
and all the things that grin out at me in it,
imagined into existence by every fairytale I'd ever been told
and wove into my psyche

In like fashion,
it is surprising to discover
this is not half of what a holler is.

The dark gives sunshine its pretty reputation
and a time for us to quiet daylight anxieties,
for stained hands to rest their calluses,
to give stars a stage to dance on and
hoot owls an audience to sing to
Out of the shadows slide crickets dribbling gossip
from between their rubbing forewings
a community gathering
at which no one breaks bread alone
all in ways familiar to greens that rise from sweat and soil
in both cases, the dark and the soil breathe life into being

The holler is all of this and none of this
which is to say that it is
​the night, the field
from which a home springs,
forging a people who learned to hold up the sky 
     from the mountains themselves,
birthing grubby little hands that play 
     thoughtlessly among wizened trees that
     once gave their grandmothers fruit to fold 
     into the kind of foods eaten now only in song,
ushering new ways into habit
This land forgets itself into a contradiction
and I am afraid to like it as much as I do
because I know better than to
flirt with those who are broken in the same places
or
​pretend that I speak the language of the dark or the soil

The holler is not for my tongue to name
so I let ears speak instead in this place

***
eKY Flood Relief Annotation 8/7/22
Hollers are "hollows" wound richly throughout the Appalachian mountains. My cohort of University of North Carolina and Duke scholars lived in what was locally known as the "Graveyard Holler." I remember the thick, lush curtains of kudzu rising up past the rooftops, reminding all that with time, even foreign species become familiar as rain. Such things really feel possible in Letcher County. Support a neighborhood where many things are given space to grow as they recover from historic floods: https://tinyurl.com/ekyhollers

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