The image persists.
A big man stands outlined
against mountains and darkened sky,
mouth half open as if to say
---well goddamn, what is this---
The image persists:
mingling with three dead crows
hanging from poles
in a Beech Mountain cornfield,
feathers glistening from recent rain,
sacrifices to forces
we name, worship, fear,
their powers unchanged by our regard;
mingling with Ray Hicks, eyes closed,
telling ancient tales as he rocks
in a chair beneath hex signs
he has painted on the porch ceiling,
Black clouds gathering over the Beech,
thunder moving closer,
as Jack sets out to stop the Northwest Wind,
"'Oh Jack, ye don't want to do that,'
the old man said, eyes blue as a winter sky
hair alive with birds, snakes, ground squirrels;"
mingling with the Presnell graveyard
near the summit of the Beech,
October Nineteen Sixty-Seven,
Carroll standing by the rusted Fifty-Two Ford pickup
we'd used to haul Pat's body
up the mountain,
spots of sunlight visible through low clouds.
well goddamn what is this shit anyway
After Pat's burial we stayed drunk for a year.
Carroll would laugh at times,
"Goddamn, poor old Pat!
"Gives me shivers whenever I think of him
"pointing to that operating room door.
"I'd sure as shit hate that."
Carroll, outlined against mountains and sky,
mouth half open
as if to say
well goddamn what is this shit anyway
what is this shit
anyway
goddamn

CHORUS	Mmmm Mmmm Lord
	I got those Beech Mountain Lightning Blues
	Lord    Lord    Lord
	I got those Beech Mountain Lightning Blues 
	From the top of my head
	To the bottoms of my working shoes
	And they're driving me
	Yes driving me
	Insane

From the Hicks place a path goes down the hollow
into the woods by a dark spring.
Huckleberries, blackberries, wild apples,
surround the waters,
four cairns enclosing the ground
as securely as a wall,
on the topmost rock of the northern cairn
slight traces of crimson.

Silent flow from cleft rock
has washed away flesh and blossoms
since long before the first Cherokee
cupped its waters, knew its strength.
On hands and knees I lap from it,
my wolfen teeth aching from the cold.
The earth trembles,
as though forces within strain
to join those behind dark clouds.

Dark spring, dark earth, dark clouds,
darkness enough for any theological madman
dwelling on darkness, ignoring
the brilliance which can bridge it,
crashing, blinding power
which burns its conduits.

Storytellers have sat by this spring,
bound by these cairns,
their ancient tales punctuated
with birdsong, crickets, rustlings in the bush,
as twilight loses the heavens
and night falls, a walking shadow
across a landscape only slightly
altered by the Century.

Nearby hollows still ring with modal tunings
as dancers move across ridges
digging galax and ginsang root,
chanting ballads made half of words,
half of syllables faintly understood.

Filled with water, unslaked,
I rise beneath the clear moon, quartered, ringed,
fenced in by lines joining the cairns,
protected from night things of the Beech,
devourers of flesh, drinkers of blood,
creatures never seen, but felt, heard;
sudden creatures
whose beauty lies in silence,
swift creatures
whose grace lies unseen,
fierce creatures
of awesome neutrality,
and beyond them, beyond me,
beyond cairns, springs, moons,
a force, locked with earth
straining
to meet that from air,
straining
seeking any conduit.

CHANT	Hei dydl!   Ho dydl!   Hie dydl doun!
		Bow and balance to me
		Hei dydl!   Ho dydl!   Hie dydl doun!
		Bow and balance to me

"Goddamn, Wil, play that Sargeant Pepper album again."
The first night of November, Nineteen Sixty-Seven,
the fifth night of a bender which would last until May,
the frenzy of a mourning which would never end,
just slowly abate, dissipate, become diffuse in subsequent loss, 
in later joys; a mourning finding its last focus
on that inevitable loss of self,
that crazed structure we spend a lifetime building.

Well goddamn what is this shit anyway
The pop of a Colt 45 can,
one of a case fetched from Tennessee
because the only beer in North Carolina
was 3.2, caloric water no respectable mourner
could get skunked on.
Pat had a gut ache and no insurance.
By the time they wheeled him to surgery
his bowels were knotted,
his belly filled with poison.
"I'm not coming out of there."
The nurse pushing the gurney heard him,
saw him shaking, pointing at the door.

Pop.  Here's to you Pat.
well goddam what is this
It's you Carroll, standing
straight on top of Beech Mountain.
Did you know, as charged earth and sky
met within you,
did you join with that surge of power
or was it a clap of erasure?
Were you alive we could laugh at your death.
'Poor old Carroll," you'd say.
Random shit, damned electrons
shifting chaos we dare name
with unspeakable words in hidden languages

CHORUS	Mmmm Mmmm Lord
	I got those Beech Mountain Lightning Blues
	Lord    Lord    Lord
	I got those Beech Mountain Lightning Blues 
	From the top of my head
	To the bottoms of my working shoes
	And they're driving me
	Yes driving me
	Insane

Ba	ba   ba   lili   ba
Sing faden dilly and daden dilly
Sing faden dilly and deele dan
With my fa ding diddle
Sing trang dil do lee
Jack, if ye will forget about stopping
that Northwest Wind
I will give ye a present
I will give ye a table cloth forever
filled with food and drink
I will give ye knowledge of mysteries
I will lead ye to a spring of dark water
in hollow bounded by mountains
where ginsang diggers line the ridges
and lambs still die upon stone altars
blood soaking into charged earth
as their last bleats echo against the Beech
a hollow where the Northwest Wind never blows
a dwelling place for God, or something.

I will take ye there, Jack
if ye will forget the Northwest Wind
I will teach ye names of forces
I will show ye their faces
I will teach ye tongues beyond meaning
I will reveal the truth of hanged crows
and teach ye to read their fall of feathers
ye will learn songs Jack
songs of the joining of earth and air
these things I will teach ye
these things I will show ye
I will show ye a rock where silent water flows
into a pool where moonlight shines one night a year
I'll show ye a rose
white as the snows
save for a blood red heart
ye will sing in new modes
ye will dream of new roads
which will never appear on a chart
so put down your wind still dreams
ye might as well go pushing streams
back from the sea
into the hills
where they spring from rocks in hollows where thrills
come from the earth every day

well goddamn

CHANT	Hei dydl!   Ho dydl!   Hie dydl doun!
		Bow and balance to me
		Hei dydl!   Ho dydl!   Hie dydl doun!
		Bow and balance to me

Aztec priests held pumping hearts to the sun
to appease the gods,
then ate the remaining flesh.
There are no Aztecs.
Judaic priests slaughter lambs, finally,
in lieu of firstborn sons
to appease their harsh god
of thunder, lightning and barren mountain top.
Christian priests cringe before a maypole of death.
The songs of Cherokee shamen
have not been heard on this mountain
since Jack slithered down the bean tree
with his booty of gold and melody.
The four cairns by a silent stream
are piles of cold rocks
and Carroll Williams lies
dead from lightning
on a sun filled day.

CHORUS	Mmmm Mmmm Lord
	I got those Beech Mountain Lightning Blues
	Lord    Lord    Lord
	I got those Beech Mountain Lightning Blues 
	From the top of my head
	To the bottoms of my working shoes
	And they're driving me
	Yes driving me
	Insane

So you're dead, Carroll.
Tough shit.
The worst thing about dying
is that you never have enough time
to mourn your own death.
The best thing about dying
is that you can finally
stop
mourning your own death

CHANT	Hei dydl!   Ho dydl!   Hie dydl doun!
		Bow and balance to me
		Hei dydl!   Ho dydl!   Hie dydl doun!
		Bow and balance to me

In the hills of Massachusetts
another winter is coming;
a few leaves cling to oaks,
the rest have been raked, dumped into bags
or banked behind tarpaper along house foundations;
woodpiles have begun diminishing
and on rare mornings powder dustings of snow
melt in the early sun.
By my reckoning
below the high ridges of the Carolinas
the dark hollers of the Beech are colder,
have fewer leaves,
the earth around Carroll's shoulders
already conducting currents of frost.
Soon skim ice will top my dark spring
and green stalks of July
will stand leaning in brown fields
beneath the pale autumn sun.
In the hills of New England
we await snow
with anxious pleasure
this rare warm October.
People will play on it,
shelter from it,
lie beneath it
as the Northwest Wind blows
through valleys,
over mountain tops.
Ah, ye will never stop it
Jack
that Northwest Wind.
Don't try.
I stand here by the roadside,
wild critters dwelling in my hair,
beard blown back,
eyes blue as skies of ice,
to warn ye, Jack:
forget the wind
and I will take ye where it is warm.
I choose to believe
I have stood by this road
for ages,
demanding of the young
that they leave the wind alone.
Each day I clear my tablecloth of crumbs,
fold and put it away,
in the pocket where my coin sack lies,
setting out through woods
where trees are doubled over.
Each day I find ye,
Jack,
here to stop the wind.
Each day ye have forgotten,
Jack,
the promises of yesterday.
I walk the woods
by silent springs
over hills where Cherokee shamen sang,
my gunny sack over my back,
to gather healing wild herbs,
roots, galax and ginsang;
as I walk, nameless tunes
play through fiddlestrings of memory
until I am once again by this roadside
Jack
imploring that ye pay no heed to the wind.
Prayer is futile
against fire and flood;
death is tied up in sacks
only in ancient tales;
earth and sky must wed
in wind,
in undeniable forces;
leaves will fall
snows will come
lightning will crack
I will stand by the roadside
until the elements prevail
Jack
and ye
and all like ye
are gone
Jack

CHORUS	Mmmm Mmmm Lord
	I got those Beech Mountain Lightning Blues
	Lord    Lord    Lord
	I got those Beech Mountain Lightning Blues 
	From the top of my head
	To the bottoms of my working shoes
	And they're driving me
	Yes driving me
	Insane