• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 85 0

cities, with memories now dead, of Southern summers, fish fries, Saturday barbecues, and the gentle manners of Southern upbringing. These are the people who are coming back to the South to live. They often find that their Southern relatives have died or have themselves been transplanted to Detroit or Cleveland, Ohio. Still they come to live in Atlanta, “Y’all like Hot Lanta?” and New Orleans, quickly learning to call the historic city by its rightful name of “N’awlins.”

They return to the South to find or make places for themselves in the land of their foreparents. They make friends under the shade of trees their ancestors left decades earlier.

Many find themselves happy, without being able to explain the emotion. I think it is simply that they feel generally important. Southern themes will range from generous and luscious love to cruel and bitter hate, but no one can ever claim that the South is petty or indifferent. Even in little Stamps, Arkansas, black people walk with an air which implies “when I walk in, they may like me or dislike me, but everybody knows I’m here.”

Surviving

Where the winds of disappointment

dash my dream house to the ground

and anger, octopus-like, wraps its tentacles around my soul

I just stop myself. I stop in my tracks

and look for one thing that can

heal me.

I find in my memory

one child’s face

any child’s face

looking at a desired toy

with sweet surprise

a child’s face

with hopeful expectation in his eyes

The second I realize I am gazing at a face

sweet with youth and innocence, I am drawn away

from gloom and despair, and into the pleasing climate

of hope.

Each time my search for true love

leads me to the gates of hell

where Satan waits with open arms

I imagine the laughter of women friends,

their sounds tinkle like wind charms

urged by a searching breeze

I remember the sturdy guffaw of happy men and

my feet, without haste, and with purpose

move past the threatening open gates

to an area, secure from the evil of heartbreak

I am a builder

Sometimes I have built well, but often

I have built without researching the ground

upon which I put my building

I raised a beautiful house

and I lived in it for a year

Then it slowly drifted away with the tides

for I had laid the foundation upon shifting sand

Another time I erected a

mansion, the windows shining

like mirrors

and the walls were hung

with rich tapestry, but

the earth shook with a

slight tremor, and the walls gave way, the floors opened

and my castle fell into pieces around my feet

The emotional sway of events and the impermanence

of construction echo the ways of dying love.

I have found that the platonic affection

in friendships and the familial

love for children can be relied upon

with certainty to lift the bruised soul

and repair the wounded spirit

and I am finished with

erotic romance.

Until…

Salute to Older Lovers

A sixty-five-year-old woman friend recently married a fifty-two-year-old man. At the ceremony there were many faces stiff with disapproval. What did he want marrying her? Weren’t there young women properly three or four years younger than he? And what did she mean marrying him? In ten years, osteoporosis will ride her back without a saddle, and arthritis will disfigure her hands. If she could not find a mate when she was younger, she should just give up, give in, and give over to old age and loneliness.

And what did I think? I said, “I commend lovers, I am en-heartened by lovers, I am encouraged by their courage and inspired by their passion.”

I have come to speak

of love of its valleys and its hills

its tremors, chills and thrills

I have come to say I love love

and I love loving love

and I, surely, love

the brave and sturdy hearts

who dare to love.

Today, these lovers

have broken the bonds of timidity

and stepped out

before the entire world to say,

“See us, family and friends

denying none of the years

which have branded our bodies

and none of the past broken vows

which have seared our souls.

You may think this undertaking