The Wheeling feeling

In the rolling hills of Appalachia
Where the gravel roads take us
shaded in rows of poison oak and limestone fascia
Dwindling wood bridges painted in age and dilapidation
Litter the backwoods
Past the shotgun blasted farms
Where the cattle keep neighbor with rust casted cars
their bodies gutted and scattered in the mud, the working mans paraphernalia
Resemble a photographer's dream shot of untouched Americana
that screams have a glass of here's to what ails ya
We shimmy past the shanties littering the curb of the hollers
Where getting lost is not a difficult task for anyone to accomplish
But the backs of my hands can navigate these woods with age
From crayon to pencil even in watercolor and spray paint stains
I remember the days that shaped my love for these places
A tag along explorer to the face of bear caves in Maine 
Hiking up the mountain's back of bleachers that carried a steep granite facade
Where we could oversee the sails of ships through a break in the pine trees distance far off
And collect blackberries
most snuck straight off the spiny limb
And into my stomach before ever reaching my stretched out shirt lining
that I held like an apron
The birch smelled of a winter's night even in the mornings of spring
And shed their skin with the utmost of dignity
Not a single care that everyone was looking
The trees back home sing a sadder song of years passed
When white skin shed red blood
And invaded a land that was clearly inhabited
The pastures and riverbanks and concrete castles on the hillside mantle view
Were the pyramids of my adolescence
The best of travels that saturated my youth
And gave birth to words that can paint those moments
In the ink well of memories I draw from these poems
And pictures of the ohio river
The valley that was shaped by the rampage of inundated waters pilfering
Wilting the landscape beneath and seeking the green thumb of a teething city that's been numbed
By the depression and poverty
A recession that never went into remission
Now a sickness overcomes improperly prescribed narcotics
And infects everyone that addiction is willing to profit from
The ivy that's thick as kudzu
Rooted in the skeleton shells
Of slab crafted buildings set on stilts
Who's foundations have been overwhelmed
By decades of neglect
I can see them looming
Over the treeline view of the suspension bridge
Where business used to be booming
On floating barge bars stationary at the banks
Where the amphitheater is now carved out of old marina planks
And music sails the murky brown
Blues and jazz down on main st uptown
In old north wheeling where the ceilings are slanted
Towards the river that will eventually crowd them out standing
Legless and branded by the floods of long ago
That will not return empty handed
To nip at the cities toes