"sweetgum" poems
short legs
patched jeans
kicking leaves
piled to my knees
remembering color
living in sea salt pines
leaves little to imagine
of autumn rhymes
sweetgum sourwood birch
sycamore and dogwood
apple leaves beneath the plum tree
ash hickory maple and oak
mountains afire in Tennessee
eyes closed
smell of smoke-
kicking leaves
to the wind.
r ~ 9/16/14
Sep 16, 2014
Sep 16, 2014 at 10:47 AM UTC
*Fickle Silver Maples lie forlorn in the -
stillness of Noon , melancholy belles that change -
their sullen tune by the belated , crosswind steamy Georgia afternoon
Dandelion sprinkled prairie of home , bordered in thick , red clay
trenches , kudzu covered period homesteads , Spring peach
and pecan orchards drenched in wild , unabated orchid and coneflower
Sweetgum cones rattle in nightfalls cooling breeze without respite , riverstone retaining walls , whitewashed barns and gravel drives , Bantam hens perch Live Oak branches along flint , cobblestone pathways*
May 11, 2016
May 11, 2016 at 7:35 PM UTC
Lady bugs dancing in the breeze .. Red , yellow leaves shuffle beneath tall trees ..
Gray squirrel singing high above , wary crows bathing in the pond..
Wild turkey's running for cover , mourning dove's dine on cornfield leftovers ..
Orpington hen announcing her newest delivery , busy beavers chipping on Sweetgum and Hickory ...
Farm boys in the hayfield , sipping on hard cider , Grandpa on the tractor , chewing Red Man tobacco ..
Granny's making dumplings , a stewing hen in the kettle , cows are coming home from the riverside meadows ..
Four leaf clover and dewberries , brown cane at the end of the dale .. A ladle full of cool water from Uncle John's well ...
Nov 28, 2015
Nov 28, 2015 at 2:12 PM UTC
Back home,
The roads blend into the hills
Across long stretches of countryside,
Twisting and turning,
Amidst sweetgum and southern pine woodland,
Blue wildflowers and dandelions
Decorate our fields and backyards
That make sweet snacks
And wishes
When you spread it’s feathery parachutes,
The summit of Shades mountain
Elevates our historic town,
Above former native territory
And the outlying railroads
That carry steel out of Birmingham,
And hearing the distant trains call of arrival
Over the vast stretch of woods below,
Accents the whispering trees
And calms my soul,
The affections of home
Remain bittersweet,
But my absence and return
Have unearthed in me,
Where I belong
Dec 16, 2023
Dec 16, 2023 at 4:26 PM UTC
Art is a child slinging paint off a brush on canvas ! Happy faces colored with chalk on the driveway ! Water color sunflowers on a bedroom wall , hearts and flowers wrote with an innocent finger in dust on a car hood ! Playing with their food , thinking about tomorrow , borrowing Dads pocket knife , carving first relationships into a Sweetgum Tree ! Get well cards written with crayons ! A sunny scene drawn by a precious little dreamer on a frosted window !
Oct 17, 2015
Oct 17, 2015 at 8:35 AM UTC
In a beautiful brown cardigan clutching each rocker arm , whispering a hymn to herself , smiling as Earths canvas , painted by Persimmon , Sweetgum , Oak in rapid escape before her . First sunlight upon brown blade .. A matriarchs recollections , good will and nurture released just as the leaves before her ...Red for uncompromising , passionate love . Brown for a tender touch . Yellow for honor regardless of duress ! Green for Harvest , family and tending garden .. Well planned rows , tilled , harrowed a year and one day , situated seedlings devoid of **** , rock or encumbrance followed by Fall harvest . On a Winter day I watched a Maple leaf fall from the canopy , lighting upon her grave , assuring me that love will remain the same , seeking frosted moor , ethereal , soaring , within reach , ready to be called upon ! . Eternal ...
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 11:57 AM UTC
Homemade Bluebird house's of varying color and shape
Lovely butterflies hand painted by 'Angels' dot the landscape
Red Wasp warm themselves on proud , Sun drenched shrubbery
Daffodils and Sweetgum Trees , the banter of Cardinal and Blue Jay ,
Wood Ducks flying over a world of discovery ..
Carpenter bees do challenge , a green lizard seizing a few winks on a wrought iron bannister .. A pink flowering Plum tree with a performing Carolina Wren , a brown Praying Mantis on a window screen ..
Lady Bugs riding warm breezes , Natures abundant annuities , every step a golden opportunity ..
Mar 23, 2016
Mar 23, 2016 at 12:29 PM UTC
*Black and gold narrows , regal sunlight
donned in gloaming ocean blue crown
Eventides Mourning Dove soliloquy , perchance
to rest in Heavenly fields of Clover and Cherokee
Rose bouquet , neath the Sweetgum bough along
accustomed , dusky lanes* ....
Aug 15, 2016
Aug 15, 2016 at 8:35 PM UTC
10/15/2015
down by the ravine twisted woods,
By boxelder and sweetgum,
a timber rattler in the field over,
you say "those are dangerous"
"Mhm" all I mumble, stifling in the memorial of that sticky sunny summer in the forest
you say sooner or later
"Barely is enough sometimes"
Oct 13, 2015
Oct 13, 2015 at 10:05 PM UTC
My forest
written December 28th, 2020
My forest is the 2 trees
outside my front window
the overstory of my forest
is a prickly ball tree
research says
it is a chestnut or sweetgum tree
the overstory is tall and hearty
giving generous shade in the summer
and raining prickly *****
on the yard in the fall
the understory of my forest
is a dogwood
that blooms gloriously each spring
as it reaches from under the prickly ball tree
for the sun it's greedy sibling hogs
there are forests (and poems)
much more expansive than mine
built more complexly
more often talked about
photographed, written about
but this little 2 tree forest
has been my company
for 20 years now
they are my trees (and my words)
and they are precious to me.
Dec 28, 2020
Dec 28, 2020 at 5:39 AM UTC
I would wade the calling circumstance before me , free of pagan
resistance .. To describe my color blue , the music of the lake , the calm
of the morning field ..
Raging fires of love , the yield of passion , musics hidden calling ,
echoes across frozen woodland that cry in supplication ..
Black shapes on white media foster ...I am the seagull dancing for
his next meal once more ... Yellow bell salutations , the crow that told the Jay
that called out across the wailing , waiting world , with the Noon cry of repetitive thought and due candor .. Moss atop dead Pine , familiar with it's lot in this life .. The end lying in every direction , hue of birthing green and silver blue resurrection ..
Tall white Pines tickle laughing skies , brown resignation tugging
a struggling mind to the West free , cool March afternoon ....
Sweetgum cones locked in deaths final embrace , their last gaze
unknown . Still as the day , surrounded in life's music , the love of
warm wind , the call of bush berry with each new growth of the coming
Spring .. The white reflective glow down quiet roadways , O' to forever seek such analogy for descriptive written means ....
Mar 5, 2016
Mar 5, 2016 at 1:20 PM UTC
Warm coffee and dates on a-
wintry winding , mountain lane , blackberry etchings , trembling firs shroud morning trains , first day lit lanes peek through blue panes ..
Honkers in hollers beside a rumbling 76 beacon gripped-
in the perfume of turned sorghum , rusty brooks beside a -
leaf laden lot , peanuts swirl their delicious dance-
in a cast iron *** ..
Standing at her cue , locked in-
a spiritual , bankside daydream , Marny blue , butterscotch Kathryn-
wintergreen Gert and Sweetgum Zoey weathervanes ..
A cloak and dagger scheme with tall shadows ,
empty pecan trees and vivid bellicose themes ,
foggy hillside scenes , where hope and implausibility -
convene to do battle with todays pipe dreams ...
Mar 8, 2025
Mar 8, 2025 at 10:19 PM UTC
I stared at the cinderblock wall, kudzu clawin’ up wild,
A green chokehold sprawlin’ ‘cross this Tennessee hollow,
Life flickers in me, a match struck on a humid night,
But leukemia’s creepin’, a month to ***** my candle’s glow.
Sixteen and I’m done, no worse than folks who linger here,
The sun meltin’ over the Smokies, the sweetgum air—why ain’t it mine?
I despise death’s slow drag, its damp, cold fingers on my neck,
Not scared—just ****** a fire ragin’ in veins gone icy.
A dream once slunk in, like a copperhead through the pines,
Cross my warped floorboards, me froze, watchin’ it glide,
No fangs, no strike, just sickness coilin’ in its hush,
Woke me to the truth—my end’s stalkin’ these backroads quiet.
Why me leavin’ while others grill burgers in the dusk?
This land’s too pretty—cornfields gold, mockin’ my rot,
I’d toss a Molotov at it all, this carefree Cumberland sprawl,
If my arms had the grit to torch my **** fate.
The world churns on, deaf to my hollerin’ from the porch,
Beauty cuts deep—crickets chirpin’ a song I can’t keep.
Everybody’s fightin’ to breathe, no soul less than me,
But what’s it worth when death’s got my number dialed?
I chuck my truth like a deer stand spear, unmissable,
To God, to life, to folks cruisin’ Main Street clueless,
At sixteen, dread’s my gospel, my rebel yell,
A war cry howled, so this whole county might pay up.
Life’s a gift for us about to get yanked away,
We cling tight to what’s rippin’ loose in the wind,
My ache, my envy for kids racin’ four-wheelers, unborn,
No hate—just a love for livin’, sharp as a switchblade.
Through cussin’ and jealousy’s hot sting, I thread a tune,
A jagged love song hummin’ over the TVA hum,
Reckon this truth, let your own gripes loose like hounds,
I ain’t kneelin’ to anything . And I am proudly mad.
Mar 21, 2025
Mar 21, 2025 at 12:23 AM UTC