We strike out on what has become A back road – this was an open vein Down which King Cotton once flowed.

Sweet Jesus! How many lashes, and How many bones of blood Hounds and men – both master and slave Looking at each other under the mirror of Red clay – lie under the asphalt road Shimmering like a mirage under summer sun?

Yes one has to admit, here there was once Graciousness and beauty in hoop skirts too. Old silver gleamed under chandeliers in Antebellum homes, and feet twirled to The fiddles played to the imagined Rhythms of banned drums.

Of that time, the waxy drawn out Speech (we sure do talk real slow Down here ) and religiosity (now Billboards that mix one measure Of messiah with one measure of Patriotism – JesUSAves, yes sweet Jesus again!) still stud this land

As we pass through a chain of towns With one traffic light and one level crossing, Each with a Main Street lined with scabby Gutted brick buildings and boarded up stores, Houses with wide porches, in which speckled Old men in suspenders and bill caps rock away Long afternoons and lunches of Cornpone and fired chicken.

And a stray black man shuffling down These lonesome streets, still carrying Wariness (and weariness) under his shirt. Sweet Jesus! What am I doing here, A brown man driving around with you, White woman, impossible wife (marrying You would have been breaking law and Facing prison roughly hundred years ago)?

You press my free, raging hand As we quickly shoot through Ugliness – chain shit-taurants (Billions and billions of ‘shit’ Already served), chain stores (Where young women can work At the counters all days and go To bed hungry), and sheds in The distance smelling of chicken Shit or hog shit.

And then we burst into Grace – mile upon mile Of pecan orchards. Sweet Jesus! How can I not take Down the instruments from The willows, and not sing One of Lord’s songs to you, Sweet woman, strange woman, Whose hand I clutch at every Year, harder and harder?

This pine log wasn’t here Last winter, when I came Here last, one Sunday afternoon, To alternatively harangue God (Whose existence I doubt) and to Lose the constant clamor inside By sinking into the musical Silence of this wooded hollow.

This I hear all around me again – The gurgle of water as it falls down A slope of boulders, the drill of A pileated woodpecker, the rumble Of a train rushing towards somewhere (Like a long exhalation of winter earth) On tracks that lie on ground above this one.

Here at peace, I alternatively write down A word or two or scan verse From the slender volume of Blake that I carry around constantly these days In my shirt pocket, as a talisman against These days of many year-ed silence as A gangly recruit might carry with him A packet of Lucky Strikes or a stack Of sepia photographs of a gawky girl Striking awkward poses, down below Into the trenches filled with mustard gas.

What else shall I write about? The log shivers as I shimmy up Along it to the tumble of mossy Rocks and place my hand under The falling water. Lord! It is cold. Cold which passes right down To my toe-bones. Such is also The awareness of dreams where I encounter a younger myself After a season of rains, running A piece of magnet, which came from A busted stereo speaker, through The runoff sand and silt, trolling For black glinting iron filings, stray Nails, bolts, and pieces of broken cans.

How was I to know that Many years hence, this is What I would have to do Again and again after nights Of inconsolable grief - pass My tongue through a language That is at once foreign and My own?

I must also confess that often I am my own friendly confessor Holding a switch of thorns in One hand and the cross of time In the other. And blood that Spurts across the face of a sky, Devoid of both innocence and guilt, Is my will, is my testament.

And to this hollow of beached Tree bones, I will have to return Often to listen to this commandment Written by water on stone, on wood:

“Let love, or some approximation of it, Groove your heart…”