I’m from rolling pastures
veined by dry creek beds,
where centenarian white oaks—
younger than great-grandma Lucy
and her calamine feet—
shade the Black Angus mixed
with the Santa Gertrudis
as they chew their cud.
I’m from kitchens
where green beans
and ice cream
make music
when we fix them,
gardens and orchards
where we grow corn and tomatoes,
watermelons and apples,
and where we enjoy
the occasional persimmon pudding.
Ambrosia isn’t coconut and pineapple,
it’s two cups of sugar,
two cups of milk,
two cups of flour,
four eggs, cinnamon, vanilla,
and two cups of persimmon pulp.
I’m stuck between Erect
and Climax,
on the way to High Point.
But I never go there.
I go “down yonder”
and ask, “ ‘Chup to?”
I buy hay from Jack Fagg,
honey from Janice Horny,
meet JB at 3 a.m.
to discuss politics and watch
his drunk father drink more.
I see my cousins
when I drive 22 to town,
“Routh Oil Company”,
“Alvin’s Automotive.”
Eric, “adopted Cherokee”,
still my blood-kin, gives me 5th Avenues
to say goodbye.
In the barnyard,
I smell the diesel fuel
Granddaddy Routh used to scrub away
the grease from under our fingernails.
At the dinner table,
I taste fire in the peppers
Grandpa Cranford collected in his shirt pocket.
I’m from coldwater springs
where we lose boots and calves
in the mud, like quicksand but only knee deep.
I’m from flower gardens
where opossums slumber,
where they wake under the moon
to eat the leftover cat food.
On my farm,
we build cairns as monuments
for the dogs and cats,
feed corn to the deer and save them
from the spot-lighters and poachers—
sanctuary. “Jesus is Lord
Over Gray’s Chapel,”
but my grandpas taught me
how to fish, how to sow,
to kiss the catfish
and throw them back
(their lips look just like a person’s),
taught me how to look for pine hearts
and cut wood already fallen,
how to give life
and only borrow it.