when the cotton bolls were fluffiest and whitest
we would have a preview of the wealth waiting in the wings
and like spoilt brats pick our destinations and pastimes in transit
to stations that moved us up the ladder in society's hallucinations

we spoke about the white gold elevating us beyond our dreams
and our imagination soared above the almost mythical themes
of poverty fled and riches flared with flair as hard currencies
lay between fingers that had tended the cotton and picked the bolls

but the cotton didn't sell and it was another year of still-births
and stunted fantasies in a land hankering for good living and excess
oh the pain of gratification deferred!

pick corn all day
wear my hands raw
on cotton bolls
redden my neck raw
in the hotness
milk Bessie,
fatten up the golden calf,
or catch the gold of sunsets
the shine of moonshines glistening
or writhe this poem of us,
in a field in spring
me spinning around you
you drinking me in
in this fair field tonight,
me love.

Young trees stand in clumps,
Bursting forth in tender leaf,
Chattering in the early fall,
Silent in the early spring,
Tender shoots alive,
A school yard thriving.
Thin bark, food for winter starvers,
Antler rubs for summer bucks...
A stand of youngsters
Waiting to be thinned..

The old trees root down,
Twisted, misshapen,
Root masses exposed,
Bolls huge at intervals
Intermittent.
Solitary veterans of Time's war,
Arms twisted and split,
Cracks in the roughened old skin
Letting strangers at the heartwood,
Grown sponge-soft,
Home for squirrels,
Sleep-seeking 'possums,
Note-leaving lovers.

Meanwhile
I walk and sway,
hear trains whistle away;
quite enthused these cotton bolls make
me smile

spot of fall
the last pure sun
full on burns your naked skin

the leaves just beginning to singe
to turn to coil up a bit
the wind picks up

from the northern side
as the turn from
green to orange

makes its way down the sun's
traverse
along the trees

unto the corn standing in the field
the
peanut's about to be tilled

all the turnips peas the black eyes
the purple hulls
pulled and put up

in mason jars weeks ago
cotton bolls
erupting virulently

on the long horizon from here to
eternity it seems
the birds visiting

soon it will bring the dove's to the slaughter
with all the life left lying
still

in the field
and the pleasant sounds
of growth recede

into purest  harvest
the wreck of fields
the reek of peanuts death

turned up drying in the fields
make tears and noses sniff
and the harvesters shall shake

the snow from the bush and spread it
around the land the roads
like Jack Frost

in 85 degrees
360 degrees
and it portends

the change from bright long days
to a more reasoned rush on a porch
the end of another year

shorter days less
hurry a still kind of rush

a looking back
and another looking
towards next spring