By Jenny Ward Angyal
Gibsonville, North Carolina, USA
No cougars are supposed to roam the Appalachian mountains. They’re supposed to be extinct here, killed off or driven out by logging half a century ago. And yet . . . here and there a single footprint lingers in damp earth, a wisp of hair clings to rusted wire, a blurred snapshot betrays the image of a ghost-cat slipping through shadows.
And once, echoing down the mountainside where I stumbled mile after mile over rain-slicked rocks in gathering dusk—once, a long, unearthly scream to pierce the heart.
I utter a prayer
into the darkness
that enfolds me—
may all the vanished ones return
when at long last we’re gone