West Virginia
whispers in her coal mines.
She has names and faces
fingered into the coal dust
on her houses in her coal towns.
She hugs her Mountaineers
with Big Walker Mountain,
protecting them from disasters.
She lets the sprinkling effects
of Tropical Storm Bertha
make her green, greener
while the Mountaineers scowl
but cherish the rain after.
She uses this shield
to fight off feral funnels
from the west so outhouses
stand like monuments.
Her Mountaineers,
dirty and calloused feet,
hearty and honest smiles,
grow up in her breast
mostly warm, mostly fed--
loving her like a 17-year-old dog
that tramps through the woods
with yuh never running ahead.
She glows in her odd,
frog shaped radiance
and tells her Mountaineers
she loves them even though
they spill her blood
to fuel the rest-
the selfish rest of America.
She loves them.
When they go away from her,
they miss her like a secret lover,
sometimes afraid to admit
that their hearts are drawn back
even if their feet are stuck
in someone else's cricks.
She'll wait until they're old
needing to be held like babes.
She'll welcome them back
knowing that they loved her all along.
She never leaves the hearts of
her Mountaineers,
you can't take her out of them.
---
It sounds cliche to me, but I guess if a love is that common in a people, you're going to get a lot of the same coming from them.

I don't live in West Virginia anymore. I live about 30 minutes from the West Virginia/Virginia border and even though I'm still in the Appalachian mountains and can't say "my neighborhood," but instead I say "My Hill," I know the difference. I am welcome here, but the ground doesn't reach up and tickle my feet when I walk on her. Virginia thinks I am all right, but she is not my Mother.

Today, I spent a little over an hour at the DMV (some things are universal I guess) in the town that I work in. I finished reading my David Sedaris book while waiting. I spent a long time talking to a lady, looking in a box, and waiting for the woman to enter my biography into her computer. I got a Virginia driver's license, a Virginia license plate, and registered to vote in Virginia. I took a picture in Virginia and took another picture in Virginia. I signed my name as a Virginian. I saw the state seal for the first time, and walked out knowing my license plate number would have to be missed.

I don't know my driver's license number by heart. I don't know my license plate number by heart. I have a heart on my driver's license.
---
On a lighter note:
I look like a lobster in my license photo because it was about nine hundred six degrees in the DMV, and I had been standing for a very long time. This is also the second photo taken because the woman making me a Virginian forgot that I want to give away my guts when I die. The first picture made me look angry anyway when really, I'd laughed just a second before.

The worst part was giving up my license plate number. I have been pretty upset about this since I've moved to Virginia but even more so since I got the reminder to renew my registration. My license plate number was so beautiful before. It was balanced so nicely by an eight at either end. Eight is my favorite number. Inside the hug of eights were two more numbers: 3 and 5; except for 8, I love odd numbers except for 7--3 and 5 were perfect. The last, and perfect touch was HP--Harry Potter. I could not have asked for a more spectacular finishing touch on my little Matrix.

And that license plate was dashed away and replaced by one beginning with XWF! I am not sure that I can think of a worse license plate. EX-WIFE! What?! NO! I am not and will not be an EX-WIFE! My mouth literally dropped when I saw it. I thought--Please, let her realize that these letters are terrible, worse than a scarlet A on my breast! Please! But no. She handed me two-one for the front, one for the back; I have never heard of having one on BOTH sides before. Now, whether I am coming or going, everyone in my path will see me as the Ex-Wife!

While lamenting my fears and woes to my friend LeAnne last week, she vowed to help me come up with a new, meaningful explanation to the letters of my car when I got them. But you can't just erase an immediate recognition. I am doomed. My brother tried by saying "Excellent Wife" and LeAnne tried by telling me that they were the actual letters of the actual Extreme Wrestling Foundation. She said it could also mean Extra White Female, which I am unless you know me by my driver's license photo.

I miss West Virginia, where I could be a Harry Potter fan and look like a frog instead of a lobster.

Montani Semper Libri.
Mountaineers are Always Free.
But that doesn't mean they don't love their mountain confines.