"Watauga" a poem by Liliana Wyatt

photo credit: Selah Greer

We’re named after the water that rushes and flows, trickles and dances over rocks big and small

Our stories spread through the mouths of people like how water flows down a ragged mountainside

Rich, deep, home to many, home to all who come, up from Florida or down from the North

Past generations and their love remain here, embedded into family quilts and still-standing houses

History stands still in the sight of worn-down footpaths first put in place by the old who were once young

Mountains and businesses built to the height of them clash, just like the people

Oldheads holler about young upstarts and those not-so-road-savvy Floridians

College students aggravate and are aggravated by the tiny town they’ve been shoved into

Signs propped up in rural yards screaming to vote for the same people others hate

A car wreck every other day, with fingers pointed at everyone and nobody at the same time

Lush, green, and sweet in spring, fiery and bold like the sun and light in fall

Sugar maples, pines, chestnuts, and their offshoots all lining the sides of winding roads

Sweet calls of the mourning dove, gobbles of the wild turkey, cheeps of the chickadee

A bloated deer corpse on the side of the road, struck on its way back to the forest stolen from it

A lost dog, matted and scrawny, left with no home after biting one too many times

Remnants of the places that used to be, homes that were once happy, now nothing more than splinters

Fallen trees and washed up cars, dirty water and piles of debris as tall as the Appalachians

Riverways forever changed, rerouted, turned around, and left to figure themselves out

We’ve been left to do the same; how could we have prepared for her?

Stormy skies and rolling thunder that bring up the sinking sickness in our stomachs we haven’t forgotten

Praying for rain to soothe the fires but crying for not too much, for if it floods again, we’ll lose even more

A community of lovers, fighters, dreamers, the future and the past all in one place: God’s country

Families and friends, strangers and know-it-alls, populating even the most unlikely spots

The lights and sounds of King Street, distant honks of cars horns, the revs of dirtbikes

Nature and man’s unity in this slice of old mountains and new cities

Watauga is carved in our hearts, left in our marks, and lit up by the stars

-Liliana Wyatt