Summer Southbound
Seeps slow through open
Highway windows
Haunting honeysuckle
Dynamite pond memories
Stirred up from muddy bottom
Maybe better off left forgot

Blacktop arrow straight
Going on forever
Edged in neat trim
Patchwork kaleidoscope
Fields bare and brown
Crackling and dry
Or breathing green

Home is winding roads
Evergreens like castle walls
Dim kudzu caves
Gently stirring leaves
Like searching hands
Burned leaning houses
Simple as Chinese paintings

Head-raised proud
Churches glare from street
Sides and Corners
Crosses planted in somber threes
Draped in funeral purple
All that faith
To have forgotten the stories

Shadow puppet show remember
Low dark rooms
Cigarette smoke coffee ghost
Black lit faces glow
Sterile now and white
Ashcan dreams
Swept up and blown away

I talked with him gave rides
Big and animated
Hustling to make his way
Indian jewelry bear’s teeth and beads
His old lady, she shot him dead
Bent down on his knees
“Baby, please forgive me”

My father is a stranger now
The preacher
Stoop-shouldered undertaker
Janitor with his humble walk
Shepherd’s Psalm
Just happy, he says
To be alive

Brothers growing old
One in anthill engine grease
Other in artist dream
Torch fire and spark
They never found their star
Seeking in bottles
Finding only staring mirrors

Sweet weight of magnolia
Smell of coming rain
Lightning caressed horizon
Over the shuddering glass
Of heaving lake waters
And Summer Southbound
Dreaming me awake

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