Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I am a lifelong resident of North Carolina, as were my parents, and my grandparents, and great-grandparents, reaching back to well before the American Revolution. It must be admitted, however, that there were a few immigrants from South Carolina and Georgia in that list of biblical begats. Since many generations of these Southerners had quite large families, I am related on some level to everyone in the Southeast.
A Honky-Tonk Epiphany; My Grandfather’s Garden; Wine, Women, and Song
A Honky-Tonk Epiphany
I had an epiphany in a country bar
Watching a pretty girl ride a mechanical bull.
A sweet young thing—
Midriff flashing,
Left arm raised and swinging in a gyre—
Defying the gravity that would inevitably drag her down
Leaving those breasts sagging—
That flesh grown to corpulence.
There was something—
Ephemeral and transcendent about it.
I had an epiphany.
Nothing that you could say was just this—
Or just this—
But maybe it was just this—
That there is something wonderful—
And beautiful—
About a good bar.
My Grandfather’s Garden
My grandfather’s garden had seemed to contain
A vast land, which was lain in parallel lines
Running into infinity, and I could claim,
Knelling beside the furrows, that some divine
Force had joined our family with all the lives
That we touched, and the earth was ours, by design.
Recently, out walking at night, I arrived
At the edge of his yard. It seemed that changes
Had been worked upon the house so decisive
That all that remained in this place of strangers
Were those parallel lines, which had rearranged
Themselves, creating a boundary ordained
To separate a land I could not reclaim.
Wine, Women, and Song
Nothing’s wrong
with wine, women, and song.
I like mine
cool, full-bodied, and red –
girl and wine
nicely complemented.
And I long
to be led into song.
