On Entering Appalachia

Children's Book Houston, Gloria. The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree. New York: Dial Press, 1988. An oversized picture book illustrated in color by Barbara Cooney with 32 unnumbered pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $12.89. This is a good book. It made me feel happy and sad and all these different things. The book is about a little girl named Ruthie. Her daddy had to go off to war. Ruthie and her mama had to go up on the mountain to get a Christmas tree for the church house. The best part is the end where Ruthie s daddy comes home." Glade Brosi, age 6, in Appalachian Mountain Books. On Entering Appalachia Lured from the flat and level land, I am raised abruptly as earth lifts shaggy shoulders, aliasing up the sky. No longer layered and lowered, I now ride stretching ridges following cloud-fondling fingers. Here where the land I love verticals from v'd valleys to misty meanings, I lean leafward and skyward, pinnacled toward perfection. Fragile Windblown clouds spit snow on the window; wood Bums in a stove and oil fires the furnace. We sit a mere spark from the raw, bitter Temperatures with little regard that Our bodies could be frozen, could decease, For a well-stocked woodshed and unfailing Machinery kindle smokelike thoughts to Conceal the naked truth-warmth is fragile. -Brenda Belew Chapman -John D. Engle, Jr. 74 ...