Poem of the Month June 2023

”Growing up Southern is a privilege, really. It’s more than where you’re born, it’s an idea and state of mind that seems imparted at birth. It’s more than loving fried chicken, sweet tea, football, and country music. It’s being hospitable, devoted to front porches, magnolias, moon pies and coca-cola… and each other. We don’t become Southern – we’re born that way.”

Unknown

*

It’s hot
As I sit outside night drawing down
Humid
The damp of perspiration covers me
As the first stars appear
Through the haze, and clouds, and distant contrails
Which mask the deepening blue
A warm breeze idly stirs
And its touch awakens the thought
If only it was more

Its summer in the south
And there’s a depth which hides behind the veneer of day
Like a character at the crossroads
Struggling to find her way
But the freight of the past
Is like a lone train whistle in the night
There’s a deep here to feelings
Poignant beyond the knowing
They just is

Old things are remembered here
Good and bad
Side by side
The south is an old soul set in her ways
Intangible as the scent of honeysuckle and pine
Adamant as the summer’s heat
In drought dry fields
The myth which slew the truth
Though the truth rises again with the dawn

There’s a waiting here
An expectancy here
Amid shuttered mills and sagging mill homes
And urban sprawl of the "new south"
As the lights go out
Of dreams that whisper
There’s yet a final act
The south will rise again
But is it a south that’s ever been?

The cicadas hum in the evening heat

A warm breeze idly stirs
And its touch awakens the thought
If only it was more