Elegy for the Southern Drawl - Selection

It is all dying out now in a voice asking,
"Where you from? How ya'll folks doin'?"
On the blank verse of the forklift man,
From way off down there and yonder,
Is draining, thou and thine, from prayers
Of spinsters in the Nazarene Church --
Is dying of knowledge of the world,
But still going, barely, in a grunted "hidey"
In the line at the cash register at Shoney's,
A father telling how he came north
To visit his son, impatience starting up
Its coughs behind him, his yes'ms and no'ms
An impediment here, Confederate money.
Kid's in my office, slow-talking. I ask,
"Where you from" He doesn't seem to want
To say, thinks again, then does. "All over."

 -- Rodney Jones, Elegy for the Southern Drawl
(selection)

Holy Ground

One place comes back from my early ranging ground:
A shelf of limestone alive with cedar and cactus,
A sampler of Palestine in North Alabama.
The glinting sewage of blue and brown glass

Made me know that the widow who'd lived below
Had made this unplantable tract a dumping ground.
The rock was pocked and puddled with rainwater
And felt blood-soaked and haunted with prophecy.

What I liked best were the prickles
Of the cactus that bound me to constant
Watchfulness and the whorled grain
Of the cedar branches scattered by the storm.

Stripping the bark, I'd find the balance
Of a handhold, then the stock and bolt.
Others may have seen sticks. I saw guns
To shape and stock carefully among the limbs

Of leafless treees. These would stem invasions,
And if the bomb fell, the one like a club,
Dark red and rich with pith, was the torch
That would lead me to shelter in the cave.

-- Rodney Jones, Holy Ground