"It is after all an idea, not a place but a dream." This is the thought that the author had while looking down from McAfee's Knob on an American Independence Day some summers ago. Staring at Appalachia from atop that peak and half-drunk on the explosion of fireworks over the city of Roanoke down below, the notion formed that, as a people, we could just think of any future at all and it would be ours for the taking. These poems are intended to aid, abet, and inspire any attempt toward a future not already in motion.