The Land, the Land, Always the Land

By Sarah Hagen

The Land, the Land, Always the Land.

This is poetry expressing the toll on her soul, watching her heritage mountains disappear.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781546254140

Sarah Hagen

Coal Poet, Sarah L. Cornett-Hagen, is a native of Haymond in Letcher County, Kentucky. She currently lives with family in Dallas, Texas. She has lived in southern Oregon for a majority of her life, to which these stories and poems about her home originated. She writes nature essays, poetry, and makes philosophical comments about the foibles of man. Never far from her heart or writing pen is her beloved eastern Kentucky and southwest Virginia, now in the throes of permanent obliteration caused by mountaintop removal. More of her homespun wisdom can be discovered in Stillpoint: Life Notes from a Kentucky Woman, The Coal Camp

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 Sarah Hagen. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/24/2021

ISBN: 978-1-5462-5415-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-5414-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018909190

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Dedication

The Land, The Land, Always the Land

About the Author

Postscript

Dedication

To Garnet

Our last departed child of the Land, the Land, Always the Land…

whom we lovingly called Aunt Duck to the day she passed.

[Sarah L. Qualls Adams: Peddler

South Fork of Pound, Virginia

Photo taken at Pound Gap on Pine Mountain

Letcher County, Kentucky and Wise County, Virginia Line

Circa early 1900’s]

The Land, The Land,

Always the Land

Grandma’s eyes,

dimmed by cataracts,

could no longer see

the corner of heaven

she made for me.

Sunlit mornings:

flashes of blue–

courting bluebirds flit

through the yard,

skirted in flowering bushes,

shouting colors of red, yellow,

white, and blue.

It’s spring

on this hallowed mountainside

in Virginia.

I see Grandma’s giant snowball

laden with airy puffs of white,

unkempt forsythia blooming yellow,

waxy, mock-orange blossoms

of silky-cream

dripping their sweet nectar,

drawing honey bees from near and far.

Beds of cowslips,

with orange and yellow faces,