Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve spent most of my life halfway between the concrete North and green South of Virginia: wandering about the woods, swimming in dark lakes, catfishing, and drinking whiskey over card tables to Son House and Lightnin’ Hopkins. By now I’ve probably drunk enough lake water to be half fish myself, and that’s fine with me.
Three Poems
I.
The Snake
I should have started with you,
Death, my long rustling shadow;
should have started with the day
that boy with lean arms and light
fingers pulled me, tumbling in the under-
tow, to shore; or when I stepped
out of Lake Anna’s green waters
to walk alongside a black snake
billowing through the brush
like a distant cloud, he did not stop
or wince at my footfalls, did not worry
himself with my stare, only carried
his long, round house of muscle
between the pine rows, glinting
in the puddles of sun. I wanted to touch him,
to hold my body like a branch
for him to hug before he gathered up
in some blissful hollow
to wait and sleep and dream. Oh,
do not tell me there are no angels.
Do not tell me
the heart can only hold so much.
As he slithered off under rock and root
I caught a glimpse of his unwavering
eye; lidless; black; no-light; no reflection.
II.
Genesis
Look, little stone, how I padfoot
and creep past your gates
of wrought silence, how I clamber
up your algae pitted back, kiss
your quartz speckled belly, look
how I admire your jagged grin,
the rough soles of your small feet,
little stone, how you sit so neatly
in my palm. Forgive me
my trespasses. I’m not God
and I don’t want to be. But
I have given you a back, a belly,
a face: look, little stone,
how my words make you appear
III.
Virginia Tiger Moth
Half-moon shines dull through
blue clouds, smoke of some dead fire,
feathered ghost alights
on my naked thigh,
row of spots like coals ablaze,
ashen white, winged
body a-flutter,
through the open door of life
I softly step out
