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Edited by Sue Walker and J. William Chambers read a Press-Register review read a Huntsville Times review read an Alabama Writers' Forum review read a Swampland review read an Athens News Courier story

Special thanks to Bruce Alford, Jane Allen, Steve Bailey, Gerald Barrax, Jack B. Bedell, Robin Behn, Allen Berry, Joe M. Berry, Richard G. Beyer, Margaret Key Biggs, Helen Blackshear, Jeff Blake, Diann Blakely, Ray Bradbury, Patricia Crosby Burchfield, Joanne Ramey Cage, Bettye Kramer Cannizzo, Carol Case, J. William Chambers, Caitlin Channell, Mary Brobston Cleverdon, John Curbow, Margaret Cutchins, Walt Darring, A.M. Davis, Tom Drinkard, Rita Dove, Dwight Eddins, Deborah Ferguson, Vernon Fowlkes, Diane B. Garden, R. Garth, Gail Gehlken, Anne Carroll George, Charles Ghigna, Virginia Gilbert, Andrew Glaze, Juliana Gray, Ted Haddin, B. Kim Hagar, John Halbrooks, Dennis Hale, Wade Hall, Mary Halliburton, Ralph Hammond, Jerri Hardesty, Kennette Harrison, Dorothy Diemer Hendry, Juanita Hendrix Holliman, Jennifer Horne, Andrew Hudgins, Peter Huggins, Langston Hughes, Evelyn Hurley, Ramona L. Hyman, Rodney Jones, Yvonne Kalen, Reese Danley-Kilgo, Willie James King, Thomas Lakeman, Irene Latham, Penne Laubenthal, Celia Vickery Lewis, Carey Link, Marjorie Lees Linn, Susan Luther, Reilly Maginn, Damon Marbut, Barry Marks, Carter Martin, Shelia Smith Mau, Mary Brunini McArdle, Tom McDougle, James Mersmann, Claire Mikkelsen, Jessica McNealy Miles, Ruth Gunter Mitchell, Mary Carol Moran, John T. Morris, Carl Morton, Cheryl Moyer, Jim Murphy, Mary Murphy, Richard Scott Nokes, Phyllis Peck, Samuel Minturn Peck, Jack Pendarvis, Georgette Perry, Kathy Petersen, David Pratt, Thomas Rabbitt, Jim Reed, Tut Riddick, Bonnie Roberts, James Miller Robinson, Charles Rodning, Joseph Sackett, Andrew Saunders, Sue Scalf, Pat Schneider, Thomi Sharpe, Jim Simmerman, Glenda Richmond Slater, Vivian Smallwood, Eric Smith, R.T. Smith, Betty Spence, Catherine A. Swender, Marilyn Tarvin, Peggy Teel, T.K. Thorne, Jeanie Thompson, Kathleen Thompson, Margaret J. Vann, Frank X. Walker, Claiborne Schley Walsh, Doris Gabel Welch, Patti White, Joe Whitten, Nancy Compton Williams, William J. Wilson, Jamie Yerby, and Jake Adam York for contributing to this anthology. More thanks to Don Goodman for permission to reprint a poem by the late Eugene Walter.

Rappelling at Eagle’s Point

by Bruce Alford

I stand at Eagle's Point,
the highest place in Alabama.
The trees look like Azalea plants.
The shadow of a cloud
moves over the valley.

In one tiger's leap
I no longer need
a preacher, as the rope
tricks through my hand
tightening, voiceless.

This is a lot like seeing
life flash before your eyes.
After awhile, the trees
look like ballet lines,

girls standing at point.
Three miles deep,
a boy is being pushed down
the street on his first real bike.
Then I see myself standing

at the edge of a road
spitting across a ditch,
and I remember
this is how it all started:

cutting a vine
with a butcher knife
and swinging on it
for days until it broke,

tumbling over roots
like a loose sack of clothes
until I stood on a shard of glass
hidden in the brush
and nearly sliced a toe

but didn’t break a bone
not even that time
I fell head-first on concrete,
and saw stars like Yosemite
Sam after so many run-ins
with the rascally rabbit.

Cotton Pickin' (1953)
(for Billy Tom)

by Jane Allen

Fall in Alabama meant cotton pickin' time. Mama and Daddy kept all us youngins' out of school and sent us to the ripened fields.

Burs prickled my thin fingers
and blood spurted on the white balls
as streaks of sweat and dirt
saturated my eyes and
rippled down my nose and cheeks.
Dog flies plunged into my hair
and mouths sucked on the tasty treats
as swarms of tiny gnats
stampeded round my ears and
I swatted body parts.
Sunrays branded my fair skin
and flakes scattered on the brown earth
as a trail of horseflies
descended on my hoe and
sizzled on the cornmeal cake.
Burlap sacks inflamed my ribs
and bones rattled in their small cage
as a shower of spit
splattered into my face and
I retched in pure disgust.

At the end of the day, we dragged our achin' bones home, sipped cool well water, and collapsed on the shady porch boards...dreading yet another dawn of pickin' cotton.

Alabama Nocturne
June 1983

by Steve Bailey

Out for a walk into the night.
The sky is dark,
But for the stars so bright
With their moonless light.

A grove of trees in the distance
Stands like a backdrop:
Solid, all of the same scene –
A feature of eternity.

Fireflies dance through the trees;
Twinkling wonders of nature,
They echo each other’s entry
Joined together by destiny.

I watch the piece with mesmerized eyes;
A revelation it seems,
Made soul-breakingly clear that the fireflies
Seem with the sky –

With the sky to be one,
One with the stars,
One with me
And Destiny.

Eagle. Tiger. Whale.

by Gerald Barrax

I'm old enough to stand,
a boy looking at himself
in the long mirror of a chifforobe,
Black child with sandy hair
tightly curled, hazel eyes.
I haven't learned the words,
I photograph everything into my cells:
my little yellow dress with puffed pleated shoulders
and my little pearl buttons;
my little high-topped white shoes and yellow socks;
my little blue ribbon somewhere.
The room behind me is dark,
nothing in the mirror but me
as in a spotlight, yet I feel her presence,
my 17-year-old mother, beautiful,
leaning somewhere behind me.
.............No one can explain what I've seen, a slim Black woman lying on her back, red geyser pumping from her open mouth, she stares into the ceiling's yellow eye. I see her from her right, the foot of the brass bed, my head three feet high. Someone screams "Lord God Lord God he done shot the woman" while the soft splash, splash. I stand so calm, seeing, until somebody yells "Git that chile outta here." Who knows who knows how I got there from next door, visiting Aunt Annie over in Gadsden, for neither mother nor father is there to tell me "Forget it."
............................................don’t tell don’t
tell James Albert's sister whispers in the dim coal shed.
She has hair everywhere,
the only subject, verb, object, adverb

I can put together.
It's my birthday, I come to her yard
to pick figs from their tree. James Albert's
daddy said I can, I pull a fig,
she whispers "don't tell, don't tell,"

I feel my hand disappear into the hot full-noon mouth
of Alabama's summer solstice,
lips, lips, tongue curling around, probing
the fruit from my paralyzed fist.
She changes my hands from left to right,
leaves me partially ambidextrous and stuttering
to describe it.
........................Now that I've read a lot,
I've learned boxes of "reflection," "homicide," "initiation"
to put visions into,
just as we have done with eagle tiger whale god
with handles and edges to finger,
perfect and seamless,
not trying to break in, not letting anything out.
But there is that boy who can still do this:
In the Zaire rain forest a snow leopard like a ghost leaps
and with its perfect knives
slices open this box I've made.

Fourth Dance Poem

by Gerald Barrax

............In legend, the appearance of White Ladies usually forebodes death.
............In Normandy they lurk on bridges and other narrow places and ask the traveler to dance.
............If he refuses the Lady he is thrown into a ditch.

The White Lady has asked me to dance.
She had been lurking under the bridge I had to cross
.......to go anywhere.
I’ve considered my answer
and since I’ve stopped denying it
............................................................she knows I have natural rhythm
so will she believe I don’t know this dance?

"Why dance we not? Why stand we still?"

She has seen the white feather
I wear in my cap like a plume
and doubts my honesty
but I say to her anyway
ah White Lady
but I don’t know this dance.

She hasn’t believed me.

"They flee from me that sometime did me seek."

Oh White Lady
now you’ve said it

for me it was a long walk from Alabama

and I was on my way anywhere.

Why I am Jerald with a G and Gerry with a J:
For my Wives and Friends Who Don’t Get it Right the First Time

by Gerald Barrax

My 17-year-old mother
Knew a G when she saw one
And wanted a G to begin my name.
Only 17 and Black
In Alabama in 1933
She knew how she wanted to name
Me. She was young and Black but not
Stupid, not uneducated.
She had been to Brooklyn, even
Had some Latin. But she said the "dumb
Peckerwood" clerk probably didn’t
Know how to spell, or thought she didn’t
And typed my name with a J. I don’t
Know if she protested but the J
Is still on my birth certificate,
With "C" for Race, signed by Leonard V. Philps,
State Registrar of Vital Statistics
In Montgomery. Lucky for me
The times had passed when a Good Ol’ Boy
Like Leonard might have decided that I
Should be a Pompey, Augustus or Cassius.
When my mother wrote my name

She did it with a G and I’ve been
Gerald all my life. You see
J is left-handed, and that’s how
I began. In first grade
Mrs. Williams saw the birth certificate,
Gave me J for Gerry and made me
write-handed to match my mother’s G.

That’s all, my dears, but I’ve tried to make
As much of it as I can, to explain
The left-handed J inside. All his fault.

My Son Discovers the Draw of Water
Samuel, Gulf Shores, 2005

by Jack B. Bedell

He was still getting used to the sand between his toes
when the cool Gulf water crashed around his thighs,
knocking him back, then drawing him closer to home.
It took barely a second for his face
to go from complaint to laughter, for him to feel
the rhythm of the tide, to taste the salt
splashing his smile. Three steps forward, two steps
back. Again and again. All light and love.
It wasn’t until the water reached his chest
he realized this was more than a game of chase,
more than simple joy, and that all pleasures
come with a price. He turned to shore and cried
for us to bring him back to the heavy sand.

On the Coosa River

by Jack B. Bedell

It could easily be the rain spreading
on such a yellow, sun-ripe day
or the fish snapping to the surface
to eat the drops like flies,
their mouths almond-shaped and yearning.
Certainly, I could keep the June air
on fire, glowing with motes,
mosquito hawks, the soft songs
coming from the woman sunning
naked on the next set of rocks,
the beauty of her tiny son
sliding his toy car along the lines
of her sun-blushed back and thighs,
any of these pleasant and mundane.
But the one thing that sticks is
the way your hips rolled over into waves
as you slid into the river,
the way its water spread
to accept your leaving.

Patton Lake
(Tuscaloosa, Alabama)

for my son at two

by Robin Behn

The mud flats stink like sun-cracked haunches of dead horses.
How long it takes to die, which battle, they won’t say.

We count survivors: Conestoga mailbox, inlet jammed with turtles,
swarms of invading three-pointed kudzu stars.

First I’m diving uphill, flat-out, pushing the stroller,
one hand down on your cheek, the awning yawning

green unto collapse above our heads,
then it’s time for you to put your full-grown hand

to my cheek at the end or a little before the end.
Whatever’s in between

will someday be dead horses who won’t know
they were petted or that, tonight, the moon

almost came all the way down in, or into,
this our life. It’s time to go.

But you say, once more, roundaroundaroud!
For this is the hour of flowers

furling up petals, of kudzu’s groggy rocking
in the hard-soft hammock of its u’s.

Hour when the ducklings—recently, utterly, disappeared—
might shine up through the murk—

If ever all the animals are gone from you,
the farm set bare and the word you need to name

the stall door’s rattle
—house- or thimble-sized, hay-scarred, horrible—

is one I took with me
or one I never said,

remember golden ducklings
could be coins in a fountain,

or lovely yellow streetlights under a turtle sky,
or the Red-Blue-Yellow-Shoe yellow

of the yellow thing the first time you said yellow—
Anything is beautiful

or anything is something else
and that thing, then, is beautiful

or something that is something that is
something that is beautiful.

Bury the language with me
that kept me, afternoons, from you.

Take what’s left around.
Sing what’s left: a round.

The Agrarian

by Allen Berry

At age five I walked between
My grandfather and the plow,
Following growing furrows
In Alabama clay.

I understood little about the world,
Seen from knee height
I knew that he loved this land.
Through his eyes, I loved it too.

I came to understand the love
Of making things grow,
This man of contrasts
Who walked behind me.

Born to a life of farming
Coaxing life from the gentle earth
Called to a war far from home
to take the lives of strangers.

He traveled the world
On a U.S. Army ticket
Telling me once, "New Zealand
Is the Garden Spot of the world,
Next to Winfield, AL, that is."

Yesterday in Alabama

by Joe M. Berry

Four score pushes at his door
And he remembers:

The shade tree under which the men sat,
The Carrollton courthouse at their backs.
Pocketknives in their hands,
Red cedar shavings at their feet.
Straight-back, mule-eared chairs,
Caned with White Oak strips.
Checkerboards crafted from a cardboard box,
Soft drink bottle caps their checker-pieces.
Un-ironed overalls, patches patched anew,
Cotton shirts with collars turned,
Some with shoes, none with socks.
Lean with hunger,
Desperate for work.
Far-away looks in the eyes
Of Alabama men.
Looks of shame,
Looks of needing,
Looks of wanting.
It was the Great Depression years.

He remembers
When he looked through the eyes of a child
And saw a world of sadness and despair.
Remembers humor, too.

He was there that day when Great Americans were discussed.
Washington, Jefferson, Fulton, Bell, Edison,
Whitney and his cotton gin.
The latter Roosevelt was a rising star,
He offered hope,
A rare commodity under that shade tree
Of West Alabama,
The only world the little boy knew.

He was there when grown men laughed
To keep from crying.
He remembers the grown, hungry men
And their talk of their champions.
Talk of great men offered hope.
Hope for a job,
Hope for a payday,
Hope for his family eating store-bought food,
Rather than standing in the commodity line
Each Thursday for the un-bleached flour, beans, and cheese.

He remembers the talk that day,
Each man having a champion,
Each man having a king.
All their kings had fed their children,
And wore socks on their ankles.

He remembers Mr. Bridges
Sitting silently
With dime-size, wire-rimmed glasses
Hanging on the tip of his nose,
His lower lip filled with Garrett snuff.
Mr. Bridges was quiet that day,
Seemed not to have a champion,
Except his snuff.

It was serious talk that day,
Everyone looking for a king.
Hungry for food,
Hungrier still for hope.

Laughter could mask,
For a moment,
The lack of hope.
And the men needed
That moment.

The old one remembers
The champion talk running its course
And the misery of quietness
Beginning anew.
He remembers Mr. Bridges
Leaning forward in his mule-ear chair,
Spitting a mouth full of that brown
Mixture of saliva and snuff
Into the loose dirt of the courthouse lawn,
And, for a moment, allowing his
Hungry friends the luxury of laughter,
And escape of doom by saying,
“I-god boys, ole Levi Garrett weren’t no damn fool.”

For a moment,
The grown, hungry men laughed.
For a moment,
The laughter drowned the growling of their hungry guts.
For a moment
They had a king.

The old man remembers.

Other Seasons

by Richard G. Beyer

hold memories
of bright and pleasant days
but springtime always takes me in
with dark and solemn ways

where endless crosses line the green
that gentle rains now bring
and lead my April heart once more
to Shiloh in the spring.

There bitter shot and shell and smoke
bloomed crimson death for days
and muskets flowered deadly fire
that thundered through the haze

from Shiloh Church to Water Oaks
and down to Pittsburg Landing
the gruesome savage slaughter scene
eludes all understanding.

The Hornet’s Nest, the Sunken Road
such place names here are spoken
and tell our saddest history
of thousands torn and broken

upon these fields the combat raged
the carnage and the stench
and corpses by the hundreds placed
into each burial trench.

The groans of men who met a fate
too ghastly now to think
who dragged their way to Bloody Pond
to seek a final drink

the surgeon’s tents all drenched in blood
the screams of amputation
with morphine gone the wounded shrieked
the birth pangs of a nation.

Yet still their glory blossoms
whose youth was blown away
like dogwood petals on the breeze
one bloody April day

now past the call of earthly care
their memory let us sing
as reborn days burst green again
at Shiloh in the spring.

To Marjorie
Nine Years Gone

by Richard G. Beyer

from The Panhandler, #25, Spring 1992

“Whatever remembers us, finally, is enough.
If anything remembers, something is love.”
— John Ciardi, “Minus One”

Once upon a Bloody Mary night long ago
between the remission of your myeloma
and the onset of small-cell “Big C”
into those lungs that once filled
night club nights with your songs,
we sipped those melting hours away
in a semi-deserted Birmingham lounge
listening to a struggling musician
as he whittled tender feelings raw
on the time-thread strings of an old guitar,
metering out serenades of sweet sorrow
into the bleak hours of dark mourning.

He finished “Killing Me Softly” with
“What’ll I Do,” “After You’ve Gone,”
and you gave him words of encouragement,
a sense of worth, hope for the future,
never quite saving enough for yourself.
Three men in a dark corner played cards
and each time the bearded one got lucky
he bought the house a round of drinks;
we drank free all night and thanked him
but I do not recall ever seeing his face.
Later, I wished he had been in your corner
when you finally played your last hand.

Today, I have the strangest feeling that
if I went back, they would all be there,
the guitar man, the bartender, the gambler,
some sort of Twilight Zone morality play
suspended in time and space, awaiting me.
But without a program, without your help
I’m not clever enough to grasp our roles.
I suppose the bartender must have been God,
holding things in balance, summing the tab,
but who could the rest of us be; what parts
did we play? The cold, sober daylight tells
we’ve both paid up; no one drinks for free.

The Rattling of Bones

by Margaret Key Biggs

People are always asking me
why I left Florida to come home
to Alabama. “Most people
do it the other way around,” they say.
Feebly I answer that the highways are
Too straight, and everything is always green,
Also, there are no seasons well-defined.

Most people passing through do not see
the esoteric beauty of my native Alabama;
they see only what interstates have to offer.
From Cheaha to Mobile Bay are
splendid scenes that beg the poet to write.
Yet, for all of the waterfalls, the rugged mountains
the unbelievable colors of autumn or a shy spring,

it is even more that calls to me. Except for
my Revolutionary War ancestor and his wife
all of my family’s bones lie in red clay—
spread across this beloved place.
And thousands of cousins I have never met
live not too far from the Tallapoosa River;
it is strange how we have followed that river.

Stranger still is the rattling of bones I hear
when decisions are very important.
As old as I am, they drum out a code
that says, “Child, this way; don’t go there.”
I heed the messages those bones send,
and that is the real reason I am back here.
They said to me, “Come home. Come back to Alabama.”

Muskogee Legacy

by Helen Blackshear
Poet Laureate Emerita of Alabama

from These I Would Keep: Selected Poems By The Poet Laureates Of Alabama

Indian names fall softly on the tongue –
Eufaula, Chattahoochee, Tuscaloosa,
Tuskegee, Talledega, Tallapoosa.
Like chuckling creeks that ran among
the hills and valleys when the state was young
they echo in our ear – Abbacoochee,
Hatchechubee, Cherokee, and Uchee –
Sigh through the trees where once their songs were sung.

We banished them, save for one struggling band,
into the west along the Trail of Tears,
their fate almost forgotten through the years,
sad victims of the settlers' greed for land.

Though shameful sorrows haunt their history,
those lovely names they left as legacy.

My Alabama Home

by Jeff Blake

I see a thousand falling stars at night
falling, falling from the sky
on this my Alabama Home.
I see a steel mill belching smoke.
I hear a whippoorwill.
There goes a dove, a quail, a deer.
I see the Iron Man on the hill.
I smell a paper mill.
I see the cotton pickers and their bags.
The neighbors raise a barn.
I walk along the pristine bay.
I look for arrowheads in the fields
where Creek and Cherokees once roamed.
Helen Keller says “water,” simply “water”
and her dark night is turned to day.
I hear a deep south, southern drawl.
A canopy of kudzu blankets every hill.
There’s gospel music on the radio:
“Rock of Ages, cleft for me. Let me
hide myself in Thee.”
My neighbor has a banjo on his knee.
The world’s space frontier begins right here.
I see the antebellum homes, the magnolias
in their bloom, the dogwoods and azaleas
everywhere in spring.
The watermelons are to eat, “but not before the 4th.”
There’s okra, squash, corn, tomatoes and
so much more. There’s pecan pie, sweet potato pie,
banana pudding; a table spread.
I hear the sound of a bomb, of screams, of dogs,
of fear. They ride the bus, they cross the bridge,
and shed their blood; martyrs for a noble cause.
I hear his thunderous voice from Dexter Avenue.
I love these rivers: the Alabama, the Coosa,
the Tombigbee, the Tennessee. I love the fall
when leaves turn gold and yellow and crimson red.
I miss the Bear and the gridiron duel.
I miss Bethel on a hill, the old cemetery out back.
I miss Thanksgiving at MaMa’s house.
I miss playing dominos and rook.
I miss Grandmother on Christmas Day.
I hear Hank Williams’ mournful song
about a poor old Indian who never got a kiss.
So many places on this earth I have roamed. So much
I have seen and learned. So many people have crossed
my path and taught me on the way. But, in the quiet
stillness of this hour, I still remember home.
My Alabama home.

Little Boy Blue

by Diann Blakely

from Rain at our Door: Duets with Robert Johnson

Faint echoes rise from graves. Full moon, midnight.
Your teacher, Ike, last played in Alabama.
Little Boy Blue, please come blow your horn:

You listen, turn the new song round and round.
O turn it round then finger those harsh dates
Carved into rock. Into wood crosses, slanted

On this flood plain down by the western tracks
The boxcars gulp, rattling through kudzu
Like a giant snake. Please come blow your horn,

Ike sings, but history shakes with louder sounds
As midnight turns back into blood-moist drama
And you can almost hear the river, torn

By mortar fire. Does Ike hear it too?
You've both jumped trains to Vicksburg, its bluffs high
And ruined with the shelled townhomes of planters,

The broken columns veiled in river-mist
Like this, mist white as some hoop-skirts, or shrouds.
O dig your fingers deep, o turn them round

Till you see gunboats, see besieged families crawl
From caves carved into mud, swapping mad fists
Over hardtack and rat meat. O see men fall

And see them march, most uniformed in blue—
Come blow your horn-till you echo God's hiss
And dead slaves' laughter, shaking dirt-chained bones.

Poem Written On A Train
Just Leaving A Small Southern Town

by Ray Bradbury

Druid City, Druid City, what a pity what a shame,
Until noon of April 16th, I had never heard your name.

Is the all of you a forest, is the sum of you deep wood?
After midnight, then, what happens in your gnarled oak neighborhood?

Alabama is your mater, is your pater yonder oak?
Did you wander here from Memphis or from Celtic Roanoke?

That is if Roanoke was Celtic, and if not, then where and when
Did a shambling host of chestnuts plant you here in rainfall glen?

Just this side of Tuscaloosa, did the syrup: Pepper / Coke
Drown your acorns, spout your rootlings, high in mobs of elm and oak?

Do your priests survive in traffic, evil cops on every beat?
Do their acolytes teach sapling-innocents in every street?

Does your secret population rise at twilight, shunning sun?
Were they here before the pilgrims, centuries before Bull Run?

Druid City, Alabama, was your mama mystic fen?
Did the village smithy shape you with his devil's anvils--when?

In that anvil chorus forest, were the natives scrawny, few?
Was your natal floral fatal, rank persimmon, morbid yew?

Was the raping of the Sabines carried out in centaur deeps
Where, in central Alabama, Alexander, mad Pope, sleeps?

True or untrue, glad to see you, gladder still to see you gone;
Druid City, rainfalled, misting . . . sunk in locomotive dawn.

Collected in The Haunted Computer And The Android Pope, Knopf, 1981

Written sometime before 1978, when the author was travelling from Los Angeles to Atlanta by train, for a Science Fiction convention. Passing through Tuscaloosa, he saw the old slogan, "The Druid City." It was a puzzlement to him, since the Druids are the stuff of mythology and fantasy. It made him wonder about what lay beneath the underbelly of Tuscaloosa.

Freedom of the River

by Patricia Crosby Burchfield

The river steals into the scenery it traverses without intrusion, silently creating and adorning it, and is as free to come and go as the zephyr.
– Henry David Thoreau

Among the reeds the river flows,
Bending in a graceful arc,
Carrying leaves and twigs
Downstream in swirling
Eddies of dark water;
Flowing underneath the bridge, past
Gnarled Cypress trees, and shallow
Habitat of darting fish,
Into unplumbed depths of Devil's Hole.
Jumping mullet splash three times,
Knifing through the summer air
Like programmed robotic fish –
Magnolia River's own aquatic show.
Nine solemn turtles ride a drifting
Oak limb down the river, while
Pelicans in formation fly over the
Quicksilver water and a gently
Rocking wooden fishing boat.
Sunning Cottonmouth Moccasin
Twists his way through thick
Undergrowth at the water's edge;
Venus fly-trap, Pitcher plants,
Waterlillies with broad pads, and
Xanthic Black-eyed Susans
Yield to the wake of a silver boat
Zipping southward toward Mobile Bay.

Red Clay Poet

by Joanne Ramey Cage

I can stand anywhere on Mount Cheaha,
drink in the crystal air like homemade wine,
stretch out my arms and feel this planet's pulse
like my own lifeblood reeling through my veins.
I close my eyes and search my soul for truth,
and find my love for earth is rooted deep
in mountain vales, and born of wind and rain.
I love this rock-strewn, corn- and cotton-sown
sweet Alabama land, and all the earth
spread out around it; sand and sea I love,
as far as clock or chain can rule or mark.
Here on a rock I stand in Alabama,
my thoughts like wings unfurled against the sky,
and hug the whole rough world against my heart.

Dance of the Yellowhammers

by Bettye Kramer Cannizzo

Like stately sand hill cranes,
the flickers are elegant
in their courtship ritual.

Black-bibbed breasts
trapping sunlight:

Gray-capped heads,
scarlet napes,
tilt skyward:

necks stretching,
bills waving.

Crescendoes crashing,
yellow underwings flashing.

Flowing with flair
like Rogers and Astaire,
the yellowhammers dance.

* The yellowhammer or yellow-shafted flicker is the state bird of Alabama.

Wildlife Sanctuary

by Carol Case

I sit on a dead tree stump
in a bog north of Mobile, Alabama
almost every Sunday morning
as my brothers and their wives sit
beside strangers at Christ Methodist.
They sing and smell of aftershave
while I search for signs and wonders.

Here pitcher plants lift leaves
like arms raised in prayer
above the ankle-deep waterline.
Their mouths gape open and pause
hold the last note of a hymn,
and wait for the organist
to move her feet from the pedals.

The guidebook explains how
a bog must burn to survive,
to die out and be born again,
in a ritual ancient as the moon.
Charred pine trunks stand witness,
a testament to the purifying flames.

I pronounce the botanical names,
match the leaf in my hand
with the picture in the book
as my nephews in Sunday clothes
prop their chins for the litany of begatting
and gaze out the window
across fields to where the bog begins.

A North Alabama Christmas, 1920s Style — For My Mother

by J. William Chambers

from A Taste of Wine and Gentian

Red — a color of Christmas,
the color of her life.

A 1920s' November
in days bruised with rain, wind
and the first lacing of ice,
my mother earned money enough to buy
her own Christmas warmth
by pulling cotton bolls for a farmer.

The aftermath of her labors pinned
her soul to sadness —
jolts against a childhood fantasy
that could make her cry years later
when she would recall
her frozen, bleeding hands,
the tug of a sack down rows
that seemed to stretch forever:
then the shattering of a hope
when her mother used her earnings
to buy a coat for a half-sister.
She began then to bleed
somewhere inside herself.

Red — a color of Christmas,
the color of her death.

A North Alabama Christmas, 1940s' Style — For My Father

by J. William Chambers

from A Taste of Wine and Gentian

The way Christmas Eve liquefied
in an empty field suggested

that nothing was tempered that day
I was nine and struggled

to match my father's stride
across that field,

my left hand in his right,
my thoughts on his troubles:

jobless and no money.
We were on the way to a grocer

to ask for credit for a bit of food
for that day of fantasy.

The strain on his face suggested
how imperfectly plotted his life had been.

It's a moment I'll never forget:
how I wished that I could give

him all that he could not give
us for that Christmas;

and how the strength of his right hand
never lost its grip.

Farewell to a Garden: Athens, Alabama, Autumn 2002

by J. William Chambers

"Did only softly stealing hours
There close the peaceful lives of flowers?"
— Wordsworth

Late Dortmunds linger
in disembodied ecstasy;
remnants of Stargazer lilies peer
through grasping autumn wisteria;
a scraggly patch
where Joe-Pye weed,
coral bells and calla lilies
departed long ago;
two clumps of Lilies-of-the-Nile,
now death-devoted;
Love-Lies Bleeding,
languid in its white-crusted pot;
rampant mints here;
strangling ivy there.

Neglect should never have covered
your glories . . . yet, it’s there,
rough-hewing all symmetry
Steve had planned
over the past two decades —
you the great challenger,
we the celebrants
of your mysticism.
Should not this venture
have come,
then, to some great spiritual
unfolding?

Maybe . . . but did not we grow
old together? Tired and weary?
Sick and discouraged?

Steve and I take the path
by Cecile Brünner,
unhappiest rose of all this year.
We do not look back
when we hear the last pear fall.

Old Men Chew Canned Tobacco and Call it Tasty

by Caitlin Channell

One more hour wasted
dancing black clock legs
tick tick
tick tick
till a timecard's stamped.
Go home to the confines
of an empty house with empty
bodies scratching
life like an ugly itch
in a town full of old, old
men broken by the strap,
buckle, switches,
leather belt, paddle
made them hardened,
southern gentlemen.
Did these wrinkles dream
beneath summer's thin sheets,
and Sunday afternoon
suppers? Trapped within
Alabama small town good
ole boys, Jack Daniels, country
music radio
tick tick
go the legs, such a small radius
of living. Long, lazy days
marked by thick brown spit
because this old man stamped
his timecard one final
Wednesday afternoon
five thirty p.m.
One more century filled
by the grumbling of old, old men.

Nesting

by Mary Brobston Cleverdon

The cattle egret builds a small twig nest similar to that of other herons. In Alabama it most often nests in colonies of the Little Blue Heron and White Ibis, other herons and ibis, and seldom, if ever, in pure colonies. Apparently colonial birds, those which nest in large groups in close association, need the stimulus of witnessing others carrying out the various phases of the reproductive cycle.
— Thomas Imhof, Alabama Birds, University of Alabama Press

We drove with Verda to the River Styx
to look at egrets in their nesting place.
The road ran straight past plotted farms, then wove
around the scrubby hills, dense undergrowth,
descended to the creeks, along the swamp
that offered a dim prospect of our watch.

Verda, the expert eyes on the bird watch,
pointed out the nests, untidy stacks of sticks,
each tended by the parents in the swamp –
one on the nest, one swooping to the place,
bug bristling in its beak, urging to growth
a set of mouths. The other sat and wove

A magic by its constancy. They wove
a life out there, bound by their watch –
turning a fresh crew of feathery growths
into a flock of fliers, to leave the Styx
and span the green fields of a different place,
miles and miles from the rookery swamp.

All who can, of course, come back to the swamp
as time unravels the pattern woven
in the brain, or sinews, or whatever place
instinct sits coils like the springs of a watch.
I return by memory, by what sticks
in my mind, witnessing that scene of growth.

The children with us then are now grown-up.
They called it a ‘bird factory,’ the swamp,
and laughed with Verda clucking on about those sticks,
wishing the egrets would learn to weave
neater nests, keep a better watch-out
for the turkey buzzards circling the place.

Couldn’t the parents see them settling into place
at the tops of dead trees, above the lush growth,
the vines and palmetto thickets, watching
for a chick to topple out, feathers swamped –
see them sitting there, poised to weave
their way downward to dinner on the Styx?

Observers all, we grew used to the dark swamp,
even to the hawk-eyed figures, woven in place,
keeping the stillest watch on the River Styx.

Father and Son

by John Curbow

In the Montgomery Cemetery,
father and son pose, take turns
snapping pictures in front
of twin Canadian flags furled –
and tulips curled, yellow, purple, red –
in beds at the foot
of the monument to “78 RAF Officers and Men”
who died while training near here
in World War II – “the big one” –
“the last good war,” they say.
Who are they? The father is thirtyish
and flabby – the boy prepubescent
and just the same. He sits at home
among Northern frosts and plays
his game-boy. He reads books
and doesn’t go outdoors. His pallid father
stares at this own version of game-boy
all day – comes home to eat
his porridge, and snores.
Are they the grandson and great
grandson of a long dead warrior –
or of one who at least wanted
to be? Like him perhaps,
they too yearn into the blue afternoon
for they know not what.

Green Promise

by Margaret Cutchins

Little Alabama boys
want to go barefoot in March,
to feel through their soles
the throb of life in the clay.

“No sir,” their mamas say,
“Not one day
before you can see new growth
on the pecan twigs.”

That was black Callie’s reckoning
in former times,
and what her mama had told her,
and what the mama’s mama had said.

Then people paid attention
to things like that,
held a kind of pride
in family lore.

Anyway, Callie knew more
than some of the profs
over at the University
about mullein tea
for bellyaches,
tree leaf signs for planting,
leaf frost,
and little Alabama boys’ bare feet.

Leaving Goodwater

by Margaret Cutchins

Ezra Whetstone
and Calvin Neighbors
tried on brave faces,
mouthed words
smooth as Demosthenes stones,
while the high school band
of Goodwater, Alabama
raised “Glory Hallelujah.”
The young men with other volunteers,
marched through town,
leaving innocence,
white oak shade,
sweethearts,
and good water.

The newsman said
they were heading for a desert
they’d faintly remember
from sixth grade geography,
somewhere within shooting range
of Baghdad.

Creek Days

by Walt Darring

In Alabama, where I grew up, a river
glides like a snail between its forest banks,
trailing stretches of mirrored clouds and daylight.
The water sparkles at midstream, but at its edges
it circles idly under the overhand,
where branches have fallen and leaves float in rafts,
drifting shoreward to rot in savory mulch
or off to join the flood – which still runs on,
veiling and revealing by turns its sandy bed,
wearing the green of weedy slopes and woods,
bearing commercial traffic, playing with kids
who've followed their nameless creeks down to this
historic confluence – to test themselves,
climbing and swimming with the best of them.

And then there's our creek, the familiar hole
by the railroad trestle--far from the river, but destined
to ride with it to the sea. At first it comes
babbling about rubble, rocks, and roots;
but it grows strong and silent as it wanders
through backyards in our neighborhood,
until at last it washes down to this
brown pool, just right for climbing and swimming,
with its kudzu-covered hillside, a thin path
worn by daily expeditions, the huge old oak,
the shore on our side where we sat, two boys,
nested like birds in the dense green vine . . .

If you had walked in the woods across the creek
and come upon the creek side brush that moment,
you would have seen smoke drifting downstream
or hanging like vapor over the kudzu. But who
could say where that smoke was coming from?
For we were lost to view, deep in the vine field,
smoking the vine. We called it "getting high."

This Alabama Earth

by A.M. Davis

This earth once buried a swath of secret sins
before its hardening, its congelation into concrete,
before it turned itself into an extension of the gravel above
and yielded nothing but an indiscriminate horizon
on the backs of the un-beautiful,
while lonely growths stemmed between the cracks in sidewalk
without blossoming their ends.

It admonishes itself for hating its children,
as if it had been waiting for a family who didn’t deserve
dirt embedded in the lines along their knuckles.
It had become disgusted with those ruddy knees,
those popping joints or jaw bones.

Once, it wore its reddest dress for cotton kings,
clayed its ankles
in affairs with the fathers of progress.

Once, it rouged an awful smile, then bloodied
its own lip with shame
so the lovers of iniquity would fight to hold its hand,
so the church would see its welt and wound
and have to still be sorry.

It danced with sons of slaves, of princes.
It told exquisite stories, this earth.
Under its petticoat, no unwelcome fingers found their pleasure.
Behind the fan, no demurity or smile.
What it wanted in the beginning, it still aches for in the end:
the recognition of someone important or sincere.

Yes, it waits,
its pelvis bruised in black and white.
When it holds itself in front of mirrors,
its image blurs by the smudge and uncertainty of its choices.
It buries them, then itself,
with a glance over its shoulder like a whore
who has so much more to hide.

The Post Office

by Tom Drinkard

WAS the Federal Government
in Falkville, Alabama.
The flag flew year-round:
Official.
I couldn’t see over the counter,
and walked quietly... almost on tiptoe.
The unsmiling gray postmistress
(who always knew who was sending what
to whom)
watched suspiciously.
"NO SPITTING ON THE FLOOR," and
"NO LOITERING;" the signs warned potential spitters and loiterers.
One wall held a moldering jumble of "ARMED AND DANGEROUS!"
pictures of ordinary-looking, unhappy people
hung from a curved wire hook;
almost too high for me to read their crimes.

Two hundred boxes glittered
with square, curlicued brass doors
holding glass windows to see exciting things inside;
a knurled knob in the center surrounded by numbers
and a butterfly-shaped latch key
that turned to open the box,
if your memory was right.

Birthday cards, notes from special aunts,
and sometimes, wonderful grimy pink cards saying,
"PARCEL TOO LARGE FOR BOX,"
made me stand tall daily to peer
through finger-smeared glass.

A faded map of the United States,
splitting at the edges from heat and age,
decorated the wall opposite the boxes;
our home town was there:

The center of five concentric circles;
a small red dot,
like the pivot point of a drawing compass;
the rest of the world was widening rings.

II

The shrinking town,
bypassed by the new Interstate highway,
became somewhere to go on long holiday weekends,
or in summer;
like dating a local girl
encountered at a high school class reunion;
(remembered, fondly, as pretty; but,
grown somehow plain, and...
dressed out of fashion)
when there was nothing else to do.

Summer-separation notes,
some perfumed, some witty missives;
were almost-daily delight,
I ripped them open and read them twice
hungry for repetitive sweetness,
or radical old ideas,
so university-new.

On the wall map above,
black circles surrounded the red dot,
constricting like steel bands.
Blinking my way outside, hand outstretched,
on the blinding hot sidewalk
the air felt thick, hard to breathe;
autumn was far away.

III

P.O. Box 217, etc.,
the computers recorded with my name and numbers,
as the "Home of Record" demanded by the Army.
A permanent home address
for mail.

Occasional written reports,
dispatched to that box,
had paratrooper wings or berets
decorating the envelopes,
from Forts Benning, Monmouth or Bragg,
until,

the postmark became APO 96222.
the dateline inside (always),
Saigon: (for Mother’s peace of mind).

The black U.S. Government ballpoint pen
spelled out home’s name and numbers
quickly, automatically,
as a compass needle spins
and seeks magnetic North.

Bored mail clerks
handed damp envelopes from a canvas bag,
to the lucky ones.

A smeared gray-black circle on or near the stamp;
the P.O. name and date
from that small red dot,
like the pole star
shimmered as a constant.

IV

After jet-lag sleep,
I walked, on wooden-block feet,
the short hike
(that once had been a major expedition)
to Main Street.
The town sat in the July Alabama sun,
like a shrunken, tired old man
who has nothing else to do...
jarring; like the first sight of a beloved relative
visited after years of separation,
who has unaccountably aged.

The railroad siding rusted silently in ragged weeds:
trains no longer stopped...
the old Post Office building;
not gone, but part of a general store.

Almost-familiar faces
swam up out of the wavy afternoon heat
saying my name.
Casually speaking, nodding,
passing by as if we had been in church together
the afternoon before.

The New Post Office:
close to the old site,
hardly larger, but air conditioned, with green tile floors,
and smooth brushed-steel doors with stamped black numbers
on each box,
only a small keyhole in the bottom center...
efficient. Probably safer.
While using the brass key
that said, "DO NOT DUPLICATE,"
and dragging out a jam of four-color sale notices;
a man whose yard I had mowed as a teenager,
noticed me;
"Already back from Vietnam?
seems like you just left.
How long were you there?"
His wattled neck thrust down and out of the khaki shirt,
stretched and corded like a terrapin’s;
faded blue eyes holding me:
"More than a year,"
not counting, for him,
the hours.
"My, my,
It don’t seem like that long.
You wasn’t wounded, was you?"
(peering more curiously)
"No holes in my skin," he was satisfied.
"Where do you live now?"
"... Don’t know yet,"
"... well ..."

Turning away,
waving a vague good-bye over his shoulder,
not looking back,
he pushed out into the street,
high-top work shoes scuffling;
bottoms of his striped overalls dragging.

Alone, and the air too cold
for one just back from the tropics;
waiting to meet someone else
seemed a waste of time.

I left there to find home.

Rosa

by Rita Dove

How she sat there,
the time right inside a place
so wrong it was ready.

That trim name with
its dream of a bench
to rest on. Her sensible coat.

Doing nothing was the doing:
the clean flame of her gaze
carved by a camera flash.

How she stood up
when they bent down to retrieve
her purse. That courtesy.

from On The Bus With Rosa Parks

The Tombigbee at Naheola

by Dwight Eddins

Married to water, fused with rock,
these names eluded the ethnic cleansing.
And now they float in the owl's derision,
the scorn of the hawk inviolate
above the morbid ebb of empire:
timber for Nagasaki, coal
to stoke the Rising Sun's ascension.
Down a river gutted by engineers,
slow barges are bearing the picked
black bones of the gutted land.
From the high bluff's derelict heaven
the discontinued gods keep watch,
chalk masks of apprehension.
There are no words for this at the closed
P.O.: no spells to stem this tide,
no holy names to exorcise
the dark approach of the coffin makers.

Notes:

NAHEOLA
Community with discontinued P.O. . . . in Choctaw County. Named for the bluff on the west bank of the Tombigbee River called Naheola by the Indians. . . . Choctaw nahollo, the source of this name, means not only ‘white man’ . . . but also ‘something supernatural or remarkable’ and was also applied to mythic beings before it was applied to white men.

TOMBIGBEE RIVER
The name, derived from Choctaw itombi ‘box, coffin’ and ikbi ‘makers,’ refers to old men who cleaned the bones of the dead before placing these in boxes for burial.
— Virginia Foscue, Place Names in Alabama

While Driving Through Alabama’s Black Belt

by Deborah Ferguson

Planted along paved roads,
lined with magnolia and sycamore,
in towns scarcely known, called
Eutaw, Uniontown and Greensboro
are elderly Black men,
once called colored and Negro.
Lifeless eyes reflect forgotten terror.
Distress,
desire,
disappointment
[have] cultivated the stalks
of their bodies, each face
evolved into a soul harvest.
Dried,
discarded,
discontinued
corn husks, cotton bolls, banana peels
and apple cores, planted in pristine overalls
waiting, waiting for Death’s recycling.

The Peach Speaks To Helen Gill:
Bickford Station, AL, 1899

for Helen Gill Fowlkes, 1895 - 1984

by Vernon Fowlkes

The great, round, ripening
fruit dangled from a branch
that overhung the path to the spring.
Each day, the young girl passed it.
That peach's succulent whisper
followed her to the water's edge.
It buzzed in her ear
with an insistence that ran
circles around the grandmother's
stern forbidding. It rose
with the buzzing of flies
into the great morning
sky that blazed down on
the girl, and every fruit
hanging in the meadow.

That peach needed
no serpent's tongue. Its own
words were enough.
They rolled in her ears,
ripened in the vast
pastures she carried there.
When she slept, it nestled
its velvet fur against the soft
underside of her chin. That peach
telegraphed a landscape of dreams
into the young girl's head
and laid the world before her.
Beyond her bedroom, mysterious
animals scurried beneath the branches.
Dark water flowed
from the spring as she dreamed
the beautiful dream of the peach.

By day, under a pounding
demanding sun, she would ask
Grandma, do you think that peach is ripe, yet?
............No, Helen. A few days more.

When she could stand no more
she reached out
her hand and that peach willingly gave up
its sweet yellow flesh.
At the rail fence, she grabbed hold,
"skinned the cat" with delight
over the sweetness of stolen fruit.
Juice ran into her nose, streamed
in with the fury
of Divine Retribution. She was sure
it was the fire of Hell. She remembered
her grandmother's words,
the Old Man's fiery preaching, dropped
the half-eaten peach in the dirt.
With her sewing box, she huddled
on the porch swing and sewed
buttons on little clothes.

She had eaten forbidden fruit
and she knew now what
it meant to be naked.

Portrait of my Father and Me

by Diane B. Garden

with the USS Alabama

I keep returning to a memory of my father
when mother let me take him to lunch
when she stayed behind to play with Hannah
at their hotel. From the deck overlooking
the Tensaw River, we watched two men
in kayaks with strong arms lift the current
and disappear like orange and red
streaks at sunset. I didn't have to attack
mother and unleash his furry - attention
that connected him to me, that threatened
like a frayed wire. I gave in to the wind
and sun, to cattails swaying feathery flags,
to a border of rushes across the waterway
with pale golden tops and dark stems
like a row of paintbrushes with tips drying
in the sun. I asked him questions
whose answers wouldn't boomerang
back to our family war zone. I listened
to stories about his stint as a civilian
at Pearl Harbor - days welding
ships in the sun, nights at the canteen
chatting with buddies, dancing with island
girls to "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,"
or watching For Me and My Gal.
As he leaned over the table and poured
more wine for me, his hand brushed
mine, and I looked up and smiled.
I hope this moment keeps on replacing
past portraits. We're together at the table,
with the USS Alabama in the distance,
with its grey tiers and stilled torpedoes.

In Alabama

by R. Garth

Life’s best kept secret…
Beating in your heart’s racing
Blood-red sun rays glinting off
The river (catfish musing deep in her music)
Through the open, screened, window
Of your cabin (buried deep within your nest)
Bedroom of fake, paneled wood
A/C broken (where the wasps get in)
Hot as Heaven
Sweating silver drops
Into the hellish humidity
Onto your golden breasts
A warm, wet kiss away…
Beer in the fridge
(Deep inside its coldness)
Fingertips clutching the ivy on my old quilt
—Grandmother went blind stitching it—
She wouldn’t see this, or know
The Cherokee word “Chewalli”—
She was from Kentucky —
But my other grandmother —
The one from here — had a
Dream deep within her soul
Of bells… God… liberty…
And it so seems like you, my children,
Are here…
*
Here, our mothers and fathers are infamous—
Each one a chiseled, clear-cut character—
Not a cut-out in the lot—
And they never, ever, leave us but in body—
But how they lived and loved—
The bloody soil is in our veins
How the sun shone in their eyes
Making love in the heat
And the river
(a train and Hank Williams cries…)
............Deep . . .
........................in Her.

Alabama women

by Gail Gehlken

like my mother
know how to open each hour,
fill its seconds and minutes
with sweetened juices and pulp
of memories

like packing mason jars
with hot, spiced pear relish
before capping with sealing flaps
and gold twist rings

to hold a luscious taste of August
for a cold December day.

At Mr. Bill’s Antiques
Semmes, Alabama

by Gail Gehlken

Let me sit with you
under the water oak
in rusting lawn chairs
where you go to escape
the confines of your shop

while middle-agers mingle
with their memories
saying, I remember Momma
standing in the kitchen
hand-rolling cat head biscuits
in a wooden flour bowl
just like this.

and she always drank
her coffee from a green jadeite cup
that papa claimed
didn’t hold enough hot drink for him
on cold December mornings
as he grabbed
a big, white, dime-store mug
only he could reach,
from behind the window-paned
cabinet doors.

These memorial words meander
the shop’s aisles and float
over white-pine pie safes
and around tiger-eye oak sideboards
like hands polishing
A honey-red, mahogany table top,
like caresses longed for,
and spirits revisited.

but today I choose to sit with you
outside the open door and talk
of purple passion vines,
white star jasmine,
blue swallowtails and orange fritillaries:
living things.

Poplars, Hackberries, and All

by Gail Gehlken

I am from beech trees,
growing on hillsides
behind the white-framed house
where I was born
in Thomasville, Alabama.

I am from tall, slash pines,
standing beside railroad tracks
where I waited after school
for the conductor’s wave
from the caboose of the afternoon train.

I am from shagbark hickories
rooted deep on creek banks,
holding fast against the slope
as I hold on to my need for place.

Picking Tomatoes on Sand Mountain

by Anne Carroll George

The pickup bounces
up a corrugated road
through the patchwork, red,
gold, strips of lavender. We
touch our mouths carefully
to styrofoam cups of coffee,
sing “On the Road Again.”
Then the sign “Pick Your Own”
and a million tomatoes
reflecting the sun.

We are early, the only ones.
We take our baskets, move
down the rows. Ripe tomatoes
drop with the slightest of twists.
Spaghetti sauce, I think, ketchup.

At the lip of the bluff we rest,
watch clouds bank in the west.
You bite a tomato, juice
runs down your chin. I
lie back against the warm rocks
watch hawks wheeling.

Listen, for whatever, I forgive you.

Going Home

by Anne Carroll George

South of Montgomery along the interstate
red-tailed hawks perch on bare trees
and watch the traffic pushing through
the heaviness of the late fall rain.
Tonight I will lie in my mother’s
spare bedroom and listen to pecans
pelting the roof with the circular
sound of giant periods.

My mother says she was whistling
when they came to tell her
my grandmother was dead. I don’t know
why this bothers her or why
she takes the memory out so often
to study it like a map, carefully, intently.
I would welcome a whistle, wrap
it around me like a silver cord,
weightless, cool. But not my mother.

Which is fine. For her each morning
the sky is real and the sun is real.
She thinks she is real so she
cleans her house and never wears
patent leather shoes after five.
And this fine. Once in Miami she
made bathtub gin, danced, barricaded
her house against the hurricane of '28.
Afterwards, the arms and legs reaching
through sand. Were they too real? Did
they follow her back to Alabama demanding
burial each day in a world of order?

Now, past the Davenport-Letohatchie exit
I know she is waiting. And the lights
will be on and supper ready.
A middle-aged child, I will become
for a while what she thinks I am,
and tomorrow, wading through mounds
of damp leaves, bundled against the wind,
we will fill croaker sacks with pecans
and then take them in and shell them
as we do every November for the winter
my mothers says will come.

The Alabama Elm

by Charles Ghigna

from Speaking in Tongues: New and Selected Poems (1974-1994)

The elms here are easy to talk about,
though we never really take them one at a time,
never really know one with words.

Maybe our eyes are the problem,
and when we close, our hands, too,
get in the way.

We almost cannot walk by an elm
with our fingers still in our pockets,
and I wonder if it is their silence

that we want each time to touch
or simply the feel of something stronger
than ourselves, something rooted and solid

that may tell the truth on us
whenever we come out of our pockets
and open our eyes.

The Casting of Lots
Auction, Downtown Huntsville, 2002

by Virginia Gilbert

Once there was money and the newest gadgets —
the pulley gears and wheels above the rusted vent
for the attic fan, but now the whole second floor ceiling
is water stained and rotted, spilling guts and bits
of dust and fragments from the century before
on the disfigured cardboard boxes stuffed

with dead life. I did not know you, the owner
of this house, but strangers like me today walk
over your mahogany floors, looking at
what you left behind. In the basement
is a black, horsehair reclining couch layered
in coal dust; a primitive x-ray machine presses

against the opposing wall. Every hat
your doctor husband had worn must be here,
the brims caked with sweat lines, and your
straw hats, too, big, floppy with flowers
and holes, are up for sale. A nephew
conducts this business, tells us you

are not dead, but in a home now,
too old and frail to live in your house,
too old and frail to tend your possessions.
So what is left of you? Even your privacy
is gone. White shutters are half closed over
blackened windows. A cement urn

by the front porch steps is shattered
and the other is missing. In a few days, all
your history will be sold. I see the mockingbird
skill quickly around the porch's rim; in spring,
the wasp nest by the gingerbread brace
will buzz. With repair, the dark oak doors

will open again to friends. Eventually,
a gardener will cut back the tangled chokeberries
by the drawing room's emptied window. It's leading,
I swear, looks like outspread hands pressed
desperately against the glass — "Let me in!
Let me in! Oh, God, let me back in —"

Red Mountain
(Birmingham, 1973)

by Andrew Glaze

Tu Fu said
" I climbed West on Incense Burner Mountain
—I will erase the dust from my face
and live in the place I love
separated forever from the world of men.—"

Sometimes I almost guess where that may be,
when the low sheepflock clouds pass running
into the northeast and are caught
tumbling against the pinetops of the hills—
and above, the sunfish of the second layer high

are flattened and swim portly across to the South.—
while the starlings like smoke
boil up out of the ruined sycamores
and turbulent loblolly,
the mammoth Silurian hummocks of the storm front
coast in brushing away the barely commencing stars.

It isn't here below that I thrive and belong,
on this mechanized macerated staring sod,
but up in that turbulent
liquid element where everything is changing,
being blown from Mountain Rock to Endless Plain River,
to the past changing of the sun and moon.

Peaches

by Juliana Gray

In 1967, my father brought
my mother to his home to Chilton County.
She asked, flirtatiously, “I thought they were
supposed to grow a lot of peaches here.
Where are they? All I see is pine and clay.”
He drove her through the country roads for hours,
past every orchard, until she cried “enough.”
Then he showed the plant where he had worked
his teenage summers, picking and sorting fruit
so hot that some collapsed to overripe
nectar in his hands.

He told me this some thirty-five years later as we toured
a packing plant in Georgia. On catwalks, we strolled
above the migrant workers, who boldly stared
at us without pausing from their work.
We spooned peach ice cream in our frozen mouths.
As he talked, my father’s voice was edged
with envy for machinery, the sprays
and belts and sorting trays he hadn’t had
the chance to use when he had done this job.

I had forgotten peaches until a friend
shared an August basketful with me.
We tore them open with our teeth, sucked
the juice between our fingers, pulled the meat
from clinging blood-red stones and ate it raw.
It tasted good. That’s all. We ate the fruit,
and wiped our mouths, and did not think of more.

How Trees Go Down in Alabama

for Thomas Brown, December 1998

by Ted Haddin

We look toward the hill where there was
no light and we find them after fall
when leaves are gone
and they the ones went down in leaf
a lightning stripe still cast in bark
and mold already white and cold and damp
or the long-standing pine attacked
by beetles has finally fallen
from years of weight it can no longer hold
or some woodsman has tested his strength
against a harmless temptation but missed
and pushed a tree upon a fence
and then there are those we find
after storms wrecks of oaks and poplars
twisted and thrown up by gusts and the tornado
that just missed the house
like the neighbor’s thoughtless clear-cut
I saw a wind one day turn
a whole hillside to splinters
a strange light in a wild storm
and one winter I heard ice in forms
snap a hundred trees all night
till none were left but broken trunks
and treetops clogged the still streams

Night Reverie on Elk River

by B. Kim Hagar

We sit out back
on the dock
watch the Elk River
run backwards in
the moonlight
wishing for just one
breath of breeze
in this flannel air.
Memories come easy here –
and I think of Mama’s stories
of picking cotton
and how they would come in
from the fields
at lunch time
lie in the floor
the linoleum cooling their
hot skin –
almost too hot to eat
until time to go back.

The Elk River peals away time
like thin onion skin.
I imagine Mama
8 years old,
blinding blond hair,
and Lillie Mae,
with warm latte skin
towering over her
from the next row, saying
"Now come on, Betty.
I’ll catch you up to my row" –
Mama couldn’t keep up.
Lillie Mae would lift her voice
in song
pick up the pace
so they could finish and go home . . .

You can smell cotton
in a field on a
hot Alabama day –
a scent like no other,
something you would know forever
once you’ve smelled it,
like drawing near the Elk River –
something unique, a scent of life.

Days when Granddaddy was
off to the gin with a wagon,
my Grandmother tallied
cotton sack weights at the
end of the day
on a piece of cardboard
tacked onto the other wagon,
like scores from some odd game
while Mama would jump and play
in the wagon –
the mounds like soft, hot snow –
helping to pack down the cotton.

The Elk River runs backwards
sometimes . . .
thanks to TVA.
We sit out back on the dock,
tell old stories,
reminisce,
calling back days of cotton
our children will never know.

Exeter Book Riddle 8: A Gulf-Coast Paraphrase

by John Halbrooks

Ic thurh muth sprece............mongum reordum . . .

I speak through a mouth............with many tongues,
and sing of tricks,.........change my voice
with sass.

hlude cirme . . .

I cry out loudly.
You can't stop me, sugar,............from speakin' my mind,
old evening-singer..........To folks I bring
joy on the bayou,......when I call out

my many voices,

............as they recline
on their porches.

Saga hwæt ic hatte . . .

............Say what I'm called,
I who mimic all sorts of foolishness,
dive-bomb your cat,
and shout for all to hear,............and cheer y'all with

my many voices,
............the best old songs.

ELBA BEWARE!

by Dennis Hale

Snaking across southeast
Alabama, Pea River
slithers around Elba,
eager to strike again,
lacking only the heavy foot
of limitless rain
on her sensitive skin.
Elba, beware!
the serpentine menace
vipertines on the edge
of your manicured garden,
your original sin.
Elba, beware!
tempted to build
fences against the tide,
you cannot.
you lie
defenseless,
Eden beneath
the coils of a restless scourge.
Pea River will rise
again and hiss,
and piss on Elba,
poor Elba,
Elba beware!

Author's note: The Pea River flooded Elba (usually in March) in 1865, 1888, 1929, 1938, 1959, 1975, 1990, 1994, and 1998.

A Call to Winter Uses
In Memoriam, WHH, 1910-68

by Wade Hall

Do not close your eyes today, my mother,
Because my father left last night.
There is light still for joy
And things to be done.
The warm fields are yet green;
The sun is bright on the empty barn.
The watermelons show sweet promise
Among the deep green vines
And the scuppernongs will soon turn golden
On the ancient arbor your father built.
There will be food enough and wine for supper.

The sweet potato house needs filling
Or there will be no pies for Christmas.
The sugar cane must be cut and stripped
and its juice rendered into syrup
Or there will be no Christmas candy.
The pecans are raw inside their hulls
(Only canker worms bring them down so early):
We must be patient and pick them from the brown grass
To liven up the Christmas cakes.
Chinquipins and chestnuts are filling out in secret places over the ridge:
They must be found or there will be no Christmas nuts.

My father could not wait till September
And the gathering in.
He plowed the land,
Roofed the house and crib and barn
And warned that ready crops soon go to waste,
Undoing toil and time.

Now the cotton planted in the month of hope
Is almost white
And waits the call to winter uses,
Garments for play and rest
And quilts to keep us warm
Through the long Alabama winter night.

The Legacy

by Mary Halliburton

Raised in the projects of Montgomery Ruby held my hand when I was small, gave my family food. She taught me to read pain in faces and how a gentle hand made them smile. We tilled the soil, watched vegetables and flowers grow. "Plants are like people," she said. "You have to get the weeds away, give love." The poor came to her door. Ruby met them with smiles, shared food, money, and clothes. She helped the sick and sang at church. She praised the Lord, said amen louder than any of us. No one made fun. She lived her religion. I worried when Ruby died, because she had no family. I was wrong. Everyone she'd fed, clothed and loved were all her family. The church filled to capacity, overflowed to grounds and street. I wondered what I'd do without her. Then I saw a lost child and held out my hand. Molly and Josephus of Upper Alabama by Ralph Hammond, Poet Laureate Emeritus of Alabama In early pioneer days old woman Molly Hornbuckle lived with her grouchy old man Josephus on the top side of Sand Mountain in Upper Alabama. Across the long years she hated the task of scrubbing floors and washing windows. And to her old man’s griping and whining complaints about the messy house, she had a ready answer: "Tarnation, Josephus, cleaning house ain’t nary a thang but rearranging dirt!" Night Does Not Fall by Jerri Hardesty Night does not fall, it rises; Rises from the catfish depths Of dark running Dixie rivers, Rises from the crouching shadows Hidden beneath Southern Pines Waiting for their proper time, Rises from asphalt-black city streets Flowing with Southside jazz And urban rhythms, Rises from the quicksilver surfaces Of oakbound lakes, Cool and full of bass promises, Rises from the soft-loam earth, Smelling of spices, sustenance, And the toil of hands, Rises from the iron ore mountains, Their tanned, brawny backs Turned on sultry setting sun, Rises from wildflower-sweet meadows With song of whippoorwill, blink of firefly, And scent of honeysuckle, Rises from the salt-swirled waves, Devouring crystalline beaches In hightide buffets, Rises from the shady sides of downtown silhouettes Stretching daylight's last reflection, Snapping back neon replies, Rises from the whisper of skirts, Swaying on hips, lush with humidity And feminine grace, Rises from the somber clouds of a stormy past, Electric with the enlightened hope of a brighter future, Sleeping in far dreaming hearts and minds, AND I RISE TO MEET IT! Don't you? Alabama Afterstorm by Kennette Harrison Next twilight after the thunderous night of lightning after the searing of sky after the singeing of air after the loud announcements of doom thunder-clapped themselves into our collective hearts after children piled into bed with parents pretending bravery after fierce dogs quaked with knowledge of cracked-open heavens and slunk back from watchdogging next twilight we were alive again and our faces put away their frowns and tears we were steady in ourselves and we welcomed the ordinary saw its detail, and no one was discontent but after the terrible that next twilight things were still not perfectly right not until the magic after sunset in the pause before night when electric earth which wars with heaven which feeds us and then receives at last our mortal selves when this darkening earth broke into gift enough for all. Children stopped in wonder as some invisible secret signal turned on in Alabama and there arose from June grass living lights blinking miracle miracle. Children chased little stars come to earth, and shouted “Lightnin’ bugs, lightnin’ bugs” and parents kissed sons and daughters, and forgot the storm’s terrors. Grandparents rocked and watched, and loved the twinkling earth embraced it, as it would soon embrace their very mortal selves. Mama’s New Gown by Dorothy Diemer Hendry Alabama is like a beautiful woman with nothing to wear but a bulky gown constituted of patches and tatters. When she tries to move forward, the patches weigh her down and the tatters tangle her feet. Her sister states laugh whenever she stumbles. “Poor thing! Why does she wear that raggedy old dress? She’s her own worst enemy.” Fortunately Alabama has many children who love her. Some of them say, “We like Mama in her old dress. Some of the patches are sacred.” Other children say, “Mama deserves something better. Let’s go to Montgomery and design it.” The end of the story could be that beautiful Alabama would step forth in a svelte new gown. Undoubtedly the gown would have spiritual motifs woven into its durable fabric, but it would also have ergonomic lines, enabling Alabama to move freely and to work harmoniously with any or all of her children. Alabama’s sister states would exclaim, “Look at Alabama in her bright new gown! Whoever thought she could be so stunning?” All of us who are Alabama’s children would smile and declare proudly, “That’s our mama! We’re moving with her to the front of the line!” Thanksgiving 2002 by Juanita Hendrix Holliman It could be a unicorn bounding across the blacktop At barely dawn, as we head down the road toward A Thanksgiving dinner waiting for us in Mobile. But no unicorn, as best I can tell, only a startled doe, In the pink November light, little more than a graceful Shadow flitting across the Alabama highway. Further along, pickups parked in logging roads, empty gun racks Decorating rear windows, say that hunters are abroad in the Dark woods, crouching, guns in hands, waiting. I think of her, lovely as a daydream, stepping lightly through The autumn trees, her life a blur of movement in a hunter's gun sight, And I wish her deliverance and sweet safety in the far woods. WPA by Jennifer Horne Hey Walker, hey Jim, you did good, you did what you could in the time you had to say what had to be said. Tell me, was that God walking barefoot down the road? We went by so fast I hardly saw him. Some of us here don’t know whether to save it or let it go. We want a history and it’s the only one we’ve got. Why look back? It’s over. Where do we go from here? Sometimes I think I’ll have to leave. Old Joe Clark he had a house, forty stories high, and every story in that house was filled with chicken pie. Fare thee well, Old Joe Clark, Fare thee well, I say. Fare thee well, Old Joe Clark, Better be on my way. Oh, it’s not just the white neoclassical columns, the black jockey hitching post in the front yard, not the Confederate battle flag bumper sticker, or boys in the bar singing “Sweet Home Alabama,” or even the way the “did-you-hear-about-the-gentleman-of-the-colored-persuasion-who” jokes get brought out as soon as it’s just us white folks. “Oh shit, I just forgot she was in the room.” “I forgot she was black.” “Do you think she—?” “No, I don’t think so.” It’s not the apart it’s the together, not the separate it’s the connect. It was working side by side in the field, it’s playing softball on a hot July day, and if all our sweat isn’t the same, salt and water, just like our tears, well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Meat & three, meat & three, meat & three at the City Cafe. In the evenin’ by the moonlight, you could hear the darkies singin’. In the evenin’ by the moonlight, you could hear their banjoes ringin’. How the old folks would enjoy it, they would sit all night and listen, as they sang in the evenin’ by the moonlight. Ladidoodah, Ladidoodah, ladidoodee, ladidoodee, ladidoodah. This is clear: pure hate is easy, pure heat, pure hate is clarifying, even dressed up in a David Duke suit like a hot knife through butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. As if poison ivy, chiggers, ticks, water moccasins, fire ants, rattlesnakes and a hundred degrees at 6 a.m. in the shade weren’t enough. I love the South. I love the South not. And so on until the ground is littered with petals. A dogtrot is both the cabin and the passage down its center, a breezeway to past and future, the one hard, the other uncertain. Some evenings it’s a cool haven, the loud hum of cicadas, one lone frog piping hopefully into the night fit accompaniment for a quiet mind. June slid by like a dream of dripping trees, something that slips your mind upon waking, though its mood remains, sleep-suffused, shaded, a bit warm for comfort. This piney woods clearing, this green heaven where we lay down together, sun filtering through the leaves— we could have been the only two people on earth, Adam and Eve all over, but without the sinning. If that was sin, let’s do it again. Down in the valley, valley so low, hang your head over, hear the wind blow. Hear the wind blow, dear, hear the wind blow. Hang your head over, hear the wind blow. Jim wrote: “Pinned all along the edge of this mantel, a broad fringe of white tissue paper which Mrs. Gudger folded many times on itself and scissored into pierced geometrics of lace, and of which she speaks as her last effort to make this house pretty.” A dead pine with hollow gourds hanging against a clouded sky is what? A warning, a metaphor, a minor collage, a habit? Or what it is: a home for martins, an invitation to nest from people who know something about migration. Sometimes on Sundays at my grandmother’s house after church, still wearing our starched dresses, our patent leather shoes, we’d beg to drive past the crazyman’s house on the outskirts of town, his yard and home a kaleidoscope of hubcaps and blue bottles, old tires painted white, crazy-quilt paths lined with rocks. Each time, seeing him sitting on his porch as we drove slowly past, I’d feel a sudden flush of shame, his creation on display for gaping children. On the way home: Well, it rained all night the day I left, the weather it was dry, the sun so hot I froze to death, Susannah, don’t you cry. In 1936, Bill’s father worked for the Sunshine Bakery and had to borrow money to pay for his son’s birth. I’d say he was worth it, wouldn’t you, Mr. Christenberry? Nowhere have I seen them. Like Citizens Councils and swastikas, they are stories in a book, pictures caught by flashbulbs, an old bad smell, an obscene wink. I sense them as echoes, smoke from a doused fire: here on Highway 11 is where the sign was, this was the restaurant they met in, this the courthouse where Christenberry saw the masked face. And here in Mobile is where the young man was lynched, and here is the judge who made them bankrupt. Would you want to see a cross burning in someone’s front yard, if you could? I wonder, from my peaceful room, if I would have been brave in those wars. Harper’s: “By 1859 northern manufacture provided an annual return of $1.9 billion, while southern agriculture yielded only $204 million; all that remained to be discussed was whether the political revolution evident in the arithmetic would find expression as a treaty of peace or an act of war.” Well, I fight against being polemical. Still, where else did all that wealth come from but free labor? You can drive down roads for miles on end, interrupted only by a deer leaping ahead of the car, legs outstretched as in a woodland frieze. Here, in summer, are seasonal cathedrals green transepts, tumbling buttresses contrived of heart-shaped leaves that die to rise again and hide, deep-shadowed, a secret clustered purple flower. On a lucky day you see a kingfisher dive into still water, dead pines poking up like fingers, hear the low repeated cry of a bittern. The trees have seen it all, have even been implicated in death, but sunlight slants equally through their branches on evil or beauty, and this is some kind of consolation. I confess I’m uneasy in these mansion-museums, monuments to gracious living, the style of which— someone is saying this is her “idea of Heaven” and it’s true the view over these sloping fields is magnificent until the docent tells us how it helped the master keep an eye on his slaves. Ah, the uses of beauty. Here is the very telescope with which— From the raised and crumbling porch of Saunders Hall, it’s cotton fields stretching flat as a coverlet and descendants of sharecroppers in the decaying big house who overlook them. “I grew up in this house,” he says. “And one day some men from the Saunders family came and took the headstones out of the family graveyard. One of ’em left his glasses lyin’ on the ground, and me and daddy jumped in the truck and caught up with ’em. I remember that.” Let’s have another bloody Mary from the cocktail tables set up in the yard and try to ignore the woman with her head wrapped in a bandage as though just returned from battle. It was she who planted the flowers by the steps. See, the dirt’s still freshly turned. No matter how long I live here I don’t think I’ll understand it all so why keep banging my head against it? Go to Wal-mart and see, there, how a bargain breaks down barriers to integration. E pluribus unum, y’all. Mr. Frog went a’courtin’, he did ride, umhmmm, umhmm. Mr. Frog went a’courtin’, he did ride, umhmmm, umhmm. Mr. Frog went a’courtin’, he did ride, sword and a pistol by his side, Mr. Frog went a’courtin’, he did ride, umhmmm. Sometimes on the porch late at night, everybody tired from the day’s work, talking about how it might be a good year, this time, this time we might get ahead, for once, she’d sit in her momma’s lap, too big for it now but allowed, on a night like this, and dream her way into a future where she’d be a nurse, or maybe a teacher, and live in a nice house with curtains, and maybe a good stove, and there would be a man much like her daddy but dressed in a suit, and he would love her. I see the moon and the moon sees me, the moon sees somebody I’d like to see. God bless the moon and God bless me, God bless somebody I’d like to see. If everyone falls silent at twenty minutes before or after the hour, an angel is passing over the house. Itchy nose: company coming. Dropped spoon: the same. Set an extra place. Shiver down your spine: Rabbit ran over your grave. Rabbit ran over your grave. The black man on the riverwalk asks for spare change. People are afraid. They have their wallets to protect, their sense of safety. “Spare change? For a cup of coffee? Hey. Hey! This ain’t the wind talkin’.” So often we misunderstand: Anne Sexton wrote she was “on tender hooks.” The woman with the magic magnets in her shoes says, “These are in the form of insults, but they come in all kinds.” And those three families Jim and Walker befriended believed their lives would be changed because, because how could they not? This was momentous for someone to pay them this kind of attention. For the better? She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes. She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes. She’ll be comin’ round the mountain, she’ll be comin’ round the mountain, she’ll be comin’ round the mountain, when she comes. At the roadside stand: “Hot Jumbo Boiled Peanuts— Regular or Cajun.” And I remember stopping beside the highway to pick a boll of cotton and how far we’d come from my father’s boyhood, his skin itchy from picking peaches all day, his overalls—the symbol of their poverty— heavy with sweat. What a curiosity to us: cotton in its raw form, ragged white puff on a brown stem, long before it became the Buster Brown t-shirts and shorts and socks we picked out at the Heights Variety dime store. A partial reading list: All God’s Dangers Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Absalom, Absalom! Gone With the Wind Jubilee A Childhood To Kill a Mockingbird And if I read all the books, then will it all make sense? Come with me. We’ll start in the chalky loam of the Black Belt and follow the ocean’s path down to the gulf. You bring the beer, I’ll bring the salt-and-vinegar chips and we’ll play hookey together on the first day of spring. I can feel the sand now, gritty and cool on the soles of my feet, and if the water’s too chilly to immerse ourselves just yet, we’ll walk awhile, maybe as far as Perdido Pass. Here, in this open book of sea and sand, I can imagine a change of heart— in the old tradition, sudden and lasting. This is what I, who don’t pray, pray for: something new, out of the clear blue sky. Ashes by Andrew Hudgins from Babylon In A Jar Bill gripped the can in both hands and sashed it upward, casting into the March air his cousin, a man I’d met a time or two, but now a cloud of ash and bone grit launched above the river, and the wind, which bloweth where it listeth, this time amused itself to swirl the ashes overhead and, at the moment I yawned, it slapped them back across the clustered mourners. I sucked down a grainy mounthful of fresh death, coughed, gagged, and everyone surged toward me, hands outstretched. They swatted at my dusty hair, brushed death’s gray epaulets off my shoulders and thumped my back furiously, as if this dust were different from other dust, and it was—or why would I have dressed in coat and tie, and stood, head bowed, on the soft bank of the Black Warrior, watching huge barge trains humped with coal chug to the Gulf while some young Baptist mumbled pieties? I hacked death from my lungs and spat death out and hacked up more. The mourners drummed the loose death out of me. “I’m okay. Thanks,” I said, but they kept drumming, drumming on my back. “Leave me alone! I snapped, and we all glanced, ashamed, into each other’s ash-dappled faces. We turned back to the river and its commerce, the sermon and its commerce, the wind’s new commerce, and breathed it in and breathed it out and breathed it in. John Beecher in Birmingham by Peter Huggins from Hard Facts, Livingston Press I was an accident, you know. My parents didn't want children. They were too busy: L.T. making Money hand over fist at Tennessee Coal and Iron, Mother reading On the Chatauqua circuit up north. No home life, I can tell you that. Mother tried to make up for it at Christmas, When I was down from Cornell. She got me a date with a girl Of good family and social connection, As Mother so bluntly put it. I didn't want to go with the girl. When Mother insisted, I shaved My head bald. Mother didn't bat an eye When she introduced me to the girl. The poor girl didn't know What to make of me. I suppose I looked freakish to her, Like one of L.T.'s workers emerging From that dark mill of his. L.T. didn't appreciate my antics. He mumbled something about the mind Being its own place. Mother said he had a gift for picking Phrases out of context, a gift That I seem to have inherited. My fire's in the valley: all I see is me. Daybreak in Alabama by Langston Hughes When I get to be a composer I'm gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent of pine needles And the smell of red clay after rain And long red necks And poppy colored faces And big brown arms And the field daisy eyes Of black and white black white black people And I'm gonna put white hands And black hands and brown and yellow hands And red clay earth hands in it Touching everybody with kind fingers And touching each other natural as dew In that dawn of music when I Get to be a composer And write about daybreak In Alabama. To Alabama by Evelyn Hurley I love the roar of wild March tantrums, snowy surprises, premature blooms, the taste of April in the mountains, dogwood petals bleeding scars, the orange and yellow days of summer, riverbeds dimpled with pearls of polished stones, fields glowing in October's amber light, pastures rolled with rounds of pungent hay, frost that kisses tight persimmon flesh and brings her ripe to glory – orange and brown. I love days when the broom sage sways and smiles, when singing wind redeems the earth with seed, sunrise and the fading of the light, as winter folds us safely into rest, the quilted sleep of Alabama nights, benedictions softly falling in the rain. Mind Chatter: For Rosa Parks by Ramona L. Hyman Her name: Rosa Parks The day: one The year: 1955 The month: December The place: Montgomery, Alabama Rosa: she tired she say She tired when she board the bus Walked down the center isle—tired, Sat ( in the first of the last ten pairs of seats.) Tired. Fable go: black folks couldn’t ride up front ............black folks seats in back a the bus ............they just like a bugs sit ‘em in the back of the bus so, tired, tired Rosa—she sit down in the back of the bus Bus got crowded Driver tell black folks sitting in the first of the last ten pairs of seats to stand — “make it light on themselves” stand! Rosa ain’t stand (ain’t make it light) Fable go: King say: “Rosa Parks anchored (anchored) by accumulated indignities of days gone by, the boundless aspirations of generations yet unborn” King say: “Rosa Parks a victim (a victim) Of the forces of destiny.” King say: “When the cup of endurance runs over, The human personality cries out” Rosa Parks, she cry out, she cry For the black African brought on A slave-ship—packed like sardines in stale water She cry, she cry out so I can sit on the bus She cry; she get arrested She get finger printed She quiet Fable go: Nobody know the trouble she see ............Nobody know but Jesus Rosa Parks tired; black folks tired She found guilty on 5 December 1955 Black folks tired; they start the boycott Cause they tired My mama tired, too She in the boycott Yo mama, yo daddy in it, too They walk. They don’t catch the bus They crawl; they don’t catch the bus They walk. For over a year; They go to court, keep Going on to court. The court get some sense Fable go: June 1956 Montgomery Court say: ............Back of the bus sitting for black folk ain’t right. ............November 1956 United States Supreme Court say: ............back of the bus sitting for black folk ain’t right. Rosa Parks stopped walking Black folks stopped walking White folks stopped walking, too Rosa Parks get some rest Black folks get some rest White folks—they get some rest, too Two Girls At The Hartselle, Alabama Municipal Swimming Pool by Rodney Jones published in The Unborn, Atlantic Monthly Press and Salvation Blues: 100 Poems, Houghton Mifflin Too much of the country in their walk — as though each struggled against a tree at the center of her body, or all the bare feet were shoes that didn't fit, poverty in every step, in every move, deliberate as footsteps in plowed fields, through clots of local boys, up slipper rungs to the high board, their bodies oiled, flipping away casually the menthol cigarettes, tossing back their bleached hair, both twelve or thirteen years old: like old houses, like mothers pitched forward into the wind, entering the cold, strange waters. Wake Up America by Yvonne Kalen Whether I travel north, east, or west, the minute I open my mouth and speak, I’m greeted with "Oh, you're from the South. I just love to hear you talk." I want to say "we people are your people," But I’m polite and say "how kind." You can see the wheels grind — the thought Southerners may not be exceptionally bright. Let me say, "the banjo is no longer on our knees, and brains abound in our heads. In Alabama, we understand fast talk, but we’re in no hurry, we drawl. this leaves no time for boring chatter. The question then sarcastically posed is: "Did you feel the hurricane in Alabama?" "Oh yes, a little rain and wind to clean things up, but we can handle it in Alabama.." By the way, you will probably be surprised to hear we have fine Universities complete with well known professors. We have a fair amount of doctors, lawyers, and some good ole boys. Wake up America! Alabama is part of the U.S.A. One Alabama Spring by Reese Danley-Kilgo Driving down the country road, we wound around small hills, across fields, over a shaky wooden bridge. Finally we found the farm: old house weathered, nestled under pecan trees, wood smoke rising from chimney of gray-brown native stone. We had heard there were guineas for sale here, and hoped to buy a few of these strange checkered fowl, because they were a part of a childhood too many years, too many miles from this day, this May morning, far away from a mother who died too soon, too young. In cardboard carton, punched with holes, six guinea chicks chirk and cheep as we drive home. My mother called them keets, and I never thought to ask her why. Mother, I wonder where you learned this rare word, and why you were so fond of this rare bird. There are many, more important, questions left unasked, unanswered. This little flock of guinea fowl, are for my children, two little girls who will never know you, except through the few memories I have of you and me scattering corn on the ground, for guineas roosting high in chinaberry trees, hiding in chinaberry leaves. Old Cahawba by Willie James King South, west of Selma off Highway-22, on a slab of stone the name is carved: Old Cahawba, The First Capital of Alabama, and fifty-yards, maybe more, at the confluence of the Alabama river and the Cahawba river is a solid plank of iron, an auction block, not worn by water, undefiled by lichen and time. I am certain: It was built to last, forever. Driving On Through Foley, Alabama by Thomas Lakeman The wheels of human enterprise are swift: Less than a hundred years ago, this road On which we drive was not a town at all, But only grass and advertising for A place still mainly yet to be decided on. A planned community envisioned on a plain Of undifferentiated pine And hard-packed clay too stubborn for much planting And so available at a steal. Stolen, One could say, but dearly bought by those Who left behind their other dreams of home And gave themselves whole-hearted to the work Of making from this placid ground a place: And yes, well-named and well-conceived Along straight late Victorian lines, promising Intersections of gardening and commerce, Meant to grow in stately arcs and sweeps, Just as children here were meant to grow By sturdy steps from babies into townfolk, Not too fancy for their roots, nor too wild To disregard the good of staying put. And yet the place would never be constrained: I found it so. And as I drive along The road that joins the old town to the new I see how awkwardly and out of plumb The town's two halves were joined. There is No evolution from the oak-lined streets To giant metal buildings hawking God. The town is not a lady come to tea; it is A boisterous sullen teen with breaking voice. It jumps and squawks excitedly to life Like a chicken crossing an eight-lane road, Which is about how wide that road will be Some day. I'm sure of it. Just as I know One day it will be more than Spanish moss Or even Wal-Mart and the outlet mall. Though I would never dream of trying to guess In what unplanned directions Foley wants To grow. I still think nonetheless It's going to make its streets run true In time, and take its own sweet time Deciding what to be when it grows up. The Quilts of Gee's Bend by Irene Latham after viewing the exhibit at the Whitney Museum, March, 2003 They hung like Jesus on bare walls, far from the curve in the Alabama River where they were born. Crowds gathered and gawked as the quilts looked on, silently accepting their fate while the lives of their makers were examined stitch by stitch. There is no death for some things, no story so simple that it can be told without color or form. See the edges where wildflowers grow? The sides lined with bands of corduroy marching against the grain? The bars of crimson rising like Hallelujah! in a church on Sunday morning? The spirit emerges with or without resurrection and lives in the denim strips salvaged from worn work pants. If you listen, you can hear them whispering their prayers for the children they have held and helped conceive, the sick they have nursed and the dead they could not save, for nights spent chasing dreams, days spent snapping in a breeze. Alabama Clay for David, Mentone, 1989 by Penne Laubenthal With hands as hard as clay .....he gently strokes ...............the chieftain's face as if to trace ..........a trail of tears. I watch his eyes fill ..........and my love spills ...............in rivers for this man who ..........lifts the sculptured bust ...............and hugs it to his flannelled bosom ...............like a child. I smile .....and search our meager purse, and when I find enough, we join hands and ..........journey down the mountain with our treasure--- ...............his ....................and .........................mine. Canoe, Alabama (1961) by Celia Vickery Lewis The summer we pulled up cockleburs For a penny apiece I was only six And knew nothing. Our uncle’s plan was to appease our aunt Who knew our days of leisure to be numbered Though for us they rolled towards heaven As endlessly as Abraham’s heirs. We thought life was one wide indigo river To disembark from and get back onto At anytime. But Lord, now we know how turbulent that river rushes. My Alabama Home by Carey Link I left a monotonous cacophony of honked horns, ringing phones, suburban town homes with sound proof barriers for backyards, 55 mph speed limits, smoke rising from fuel plants to turn air brown for the seeds of furrowed fields that grow beneath open sky. Long trips down back roads. To climb into the hollow of a high tree. To feel warm breeze on my cheeks. To sit at Sunday suppers of fried chicken, potatoes, collard greens, black-eyed peas, peach pie, and sweet tea. To dry clothes on a line. To find and keep treasures cool, dark, deep. To watch a yellow and black spider weave the initials of her last breath– a geometric code of where she has been and will go on my window. To listen to stories of the past and present whispered on a porch swing as sun melts behind clouds in the shadow of evergreen. Occasions by Marjorie Lees Linn Salmons is a del’cacy. Two cans is on the pantry shelf, behind the black-eyed peas and grits maw gits to feed the family. We save the Salmons for Occasions. Occasions is like funeral feasts and baby bornings. You ever tasted Salmons, sweet and pink, with salty soda crackers? Times I take the Salmons from the shelf and pray Occasion comes tomorrow . . . or today. Outside the Shadows by Marjorie Lees Linn . . . they live in a steady shame and insult of discomforts, insecurities, and inferiorities, piecing these together into whatever semblance of comfortable living they can, and the whole of it is a stark nakedness of makeshifts and a lack of means. — James Agee from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Part of the whole of it, whose feet knew floors of Alabama clay worn smooth and hard as slate, whose eyes reflected light diffused through windowpanes of paper greased in rendered fat to brown translucency: brief heir to shame and insult, whose life held nakedness as lightly as a dream. Never quite believing either one. More sure of silence and the promises of silence. My life holds yesterday more lightly than a dream. My feet touched marble stained with amber light! I stand outside the shadows of the makeshift and the lack. The silence blooms. We sing. Two Views of Howard's Chapel a memorial to Sally Howard constructed by Col. Milford W. Howard at the North entrance of De Soto State Park, Ft. Payne, 1930's by Susan Luther first published in Poem; repeated in Alabama Poets and Breathing in the Dark i There is this huge knuckle of God – at least somebody thought so – em- braced by a chapel. Somebody sited the building right around one of the biggest rocks you've ever seen. It’s huge: way higher than a woman's head: and outside, the cross-topped jagged block looks like some – I don't know what – some stone- skinned hybrid out of "Star Trek" – devouring civilization like a cinema sarsen. Really, who'd conceive a ridiculous thing like that? At least it attracts the tourists – and campers, I suppose, on Sunday morning, all sweaty from hiking the river path to get there, in muddy jogging shoes and dusty jeans. Their jaws must drop wide open when they see the whole back wall and altar's the behind of Old Granddaddy Rock (They must think: "It takes an Alabama redneck!") – There's some verse or other on it out of the Bible, or something. Seriously, you ought to see it – we'll run up next time you visit – those little yellow flowers by the doorstep – I've never been sure of their name – ought to be out about April. And the churchyard – it’s so quiet there – blooms halfway to heaven, this time of year. ii IMMORTALITY God Has All Ways Been As Good To Me As I Would Let Him Be When the rough pines burr their wind songs God's just clearing His throat & if His funnel bell should sweep the mountains clean eventually He will make them new new trees, new mountains All things the Lord hath made & unmade He shall remake Take me into your heart oh God the stony fist schist chrysalis and cupped hand budding to silk brush and a burst of seed Lord conceive me bear me as the child who would be found Lord, I pray make me happy. But God don't let me forget how I cried. Alabama November by Reilly Maginn Discomfited nature is November’s brown frown. Her mantle of fall, a mute ginger gown. The fairway’s a sea, of soft russet waves, Recalling the sadness of funereal graves. Alabama now dons a frost shroud of white Assuming the mantle of a wintry night. Harbingers of warmth, the green roots and shoots Will before long emerge, no one can dispute. So don’t be disheartened by ubiquitous brown For spring’s on the way. Say goodbye to brown. the aim of pity by Damon Marbut Late October is just the right time in Alabama if you’re in the mood to write, if you’ve got a good stoop to sit on and think under the resignation of birds. Like you, after a hard day’s work, they’re looking to eat before bed. But unlike you, they’re not granted the luxury of pulling into a store at sunset to grab some cold beer to take with you to feed. They’re not lucky enough to catch a neighbor pull down her window as she’s just returned from a shower to find you staring into space, though she thinks, or hopes, it’s her naked body instead. Nope, you’d likely tell her. Just the birds, making snap sounds in the trees behind you, skittering into the air when the last chance for a meal in your yard has failed them. And then, some tiny frightened thing scampers off down a branch, and you’d like to call it a squirrel, because it would be more familiar if it were. But what it is is lost on you, like the birds’ idea of a snack as you, yourself, are swarmed by mosquitoes you thought had disappeared with the cold as they dig into your pores, a happy group of bellies primed to fly away as the tiny frightened thing makes it nightly way for cover. There’s always a poem in that, no matter who you are, getting eaten by the elements when you think you’ve been excused. Shelby County Coyote<