sparta, georgia (second draft)

Sparta, Georgia



I have spent up my days,

slow-tongued and
sleep-stumbling through
wet air heavy with old cotton smells,

ponderous wandering darkened rooms,
plaster wetly cracking.
Smooth the never-touched beds with
their yellowed lace coverlets, damply molding,
dumbly set straight

the porcelain washbasins, blue-flower patterned,
split through by Sherman and seams now showing,
all empty and perspiring.


Here, the wood aches with age.

An emptiness clings to ancient space
saying
too many have come through here you are nothing.



I have come up aching,

slow sleeping through thick summers.

Time works itself swamplike here
we all sleep together and chew corn ground into sand.


They say there is fresh earth 

around you. They say there is much

to be loved, hot smell of wet earth,

Spanish moss, regal, overhanging.
Love the last mistake that you made,

slow-mouthed, sucking.