Daily Prompt: South
You’re speaking my language, y’all;
sweet tea and lightning bugs,
thundershowers and creaky porch rocker,
screen door slap and a neighbor’s distant rock and roll,
cicada whirr and I can’t get enough too hot to move
and please God send a breeze
and oh there’s the rain
but not for long
and the fan I sleep directly in front of
in tank top and part sheet for safety
is not enough,
and my bones bleed watershed green
and sweet tea brown…
but tonight I’m arguing with a student,
via Facebook mail,
about the relevance of history,
as he struggles to write a paper
about “nazi chic” in Asia,
dismissing it as “so what,”
and I wonder how I have failed as a teacher,
and I fight a frenzied battle
using my best logic and passion,
along with the history of the French baguette,
and my bones bleed tainted Southern blood
of a tainted Southern past
that some of my relatives still laugh about…
and I long for Southern pure
and there never is any,
and I’ve had enough sweet tea for the evening,
and I’ll lie wide awake
and stare at the high ceiling
and yearn for a cleansing southern rain.
Photo credit: jamelah via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND
Photo credit: theloushe via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND
For the month of May, I will be posting something (mostly) daily, namely some kind of respond to The Daily Post’s daily prompt or some other prompt, unless a poem or post visits me of its own accord, unbidden and welcomed.
Pushing the Bruise 
Oh, I do miss Virginia at times, and thanks to you, I went there for awhile. I miss our back porch guitar and banjo sessions, catching lightning bugs and keeping them in Mason jars as a night light and letting them go in the morning, walking barefoot in the grass, and drinking sweet tea from a sweating glass. I need to make some sun tea today, I guess.
This Yankee appreciated this brief jaunt below the Mason Dixon line. Thank you.
Oh man. Though I can’t really claim a southern heritage, the part of my heart I left in Oklahoma just skipped a few beats. I can hear those cicadas and taste the sweet tea sliding down my parched throat.
“and I long for Southern pure
and there never is any”
I love that line (nearly as much as I detest sweet tea, actually). As for the lightning bugs, aren’t they magical little beings? While we have them where I live, the best show I’ve seen by far was in rural Tennessee. What beautiful word pictures you paint.
I love your descriptions! It took me back to trips I’ve had in the southern parts of the country. Thanks for sharing.
I wish the For Dummies books made one on how to respond to good poetry because when I read yours I always think Oh yes, or Mmmmm, or How Lovely, and otherwise I don’t know how to adequately express how great these are. Took me right there with you, though, and I must have sweet tea now.