Madness comes in daylight hour;
Starbucks-driven motorists glower
from behind metal beasts with V8 power.
Depart from here, I must soon try
before this place my countenance sours
or else my spirit decides to fly.
A grove of trees in some shady vale
with babbling brook that calls me to dwell
where olden homesteads have stories to tell.
Here among the crumbling stone
a copper pot drips into a galvanized pail—
100 proof percusses in a silvery tone.
No revenuers crouch in the laurel bed
for this is an art long thought dead.
What is there for a ‘shiner to dread
when black bears mill around the place
and leg-hold traps, threats and hot lead
are no longer needed to deter an unwanted face?
No, the game is now to sit and pick—
try to learn a new banjo tune or lick
and hope the boys at the Elks’ don’t drink themselves sick.
Yet the spirit still persists
and the cocked hammer’s mighty click
awaits anyone who this practice resists.
One owl hoot right at dusk
marks the arrival of the upper-crust—
a Cadillac emptied by a persona too brusque.
City folk from Baltimore welcomed by fiddle tune
seeking to fill some primal lust
don’t realize that they themselves are the real loon.
