If I am a poet,
I owe it
to the air
of Arkansas.
I owe it
to flour-battered
pan-fried
main courses
on Mama's
Sunday table,
to bacon grease
seasoned vegetables
from her garden.
If I have
stories to tell,
they are stories
shared with me
by deep-lined
tan-faced
old men who
meet and talk
daily
at small town
Post Offices;
who tamed the
Sunken Lands,
who cut
and floated timber
in Ozarks youth.
I owe it to
my Big Smith
pinstriped overalls
everyday of his life
Grandfather who
worked the soil
of Milligan Ridge
from the steel saddle
of a chugging,
spitting
Farmall tractor
and sometimes
busted redball
Snooker racks
in town for fun.
If I am a poet
with anything
to say at all
it is because
I have known
complex country girls
who read Faulkner,
and clip coupons
and fight
tooth and nail,
for family
and friends in need.
Maybe I am a poet
because I shot
guns with my father,
bourbon with my brothers,
and much worse
with a girl
from Alabama
I met in
a Christian Rehab.
If I am a poet
it is only because
I dream dreams of
the first love
I lost and
live with regret
still
of a thousand
other choices
I have made.
I am a poet
because of
Dixie ragtime
and barbed wire
prison blues;
Fourth of July
family reunions
and south of
Mason Dixon
moonlit nights.
