Long ago in the land of the happy and unlonely there came a wandering band of men called strangers bringing sorrow and welcomed in because misery loves company as we all now know.
Her body is a plantation I worked on for twelve years, all of them solid, deep summer, uncleared timber, backwater, ditch and slough, times of bad cotton, dark nights and no crops, hard rain, riding shotgun over my love.
I dreamed of my father crossing the fields on his one-eyed tractor mowing acres of sadness heading east of a moon that'll be gone tomorrow and I waded the creek beneath a ridge where my mother is shearing dead roses and the smell of those flowers floating to the foot of the mountains reminds me of her hair and my father's laughter disappearing across the hill.