Third Holler On the Right

Slipknots of braided wool lacquer the trees with the darkness of Spanish Moss down in Kentucky hollers, where the rules are scraped with twigs in dirt roads to be washed away by summer storms and trampled on by outsider's feet. Chow dogs sleep as guard lions with manes grown thick with tick and snarl Purple in tongue and panting breath with a fight in them only the heat can quell. It's but the spirit of missionary work that breaks the silence of family circles- Cousins gone first, second, and third down the holler and up the hill... Butterflies savor every fallen apple, in a world where nature is common place, while the slipknots from racial inequality stain this simple beauty with gnarled truth and fear. Time ticks backwards in this holler: a place with no address, unpaved, unkempt, and untouched by the kindness of humanity in progress.