Renascence

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

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