Photos by William Christenberry

This is what it was like to enlarge up

down there, then. A fair place

but desolate. The signs that are suppos

to run over you what to do, or be, or purchase

are faded to the point of inarticulation.

You surmise clan used to talk

about everything you ne to know

but have grown silent for a certain quantity of reason.

A black man sat down in a soda store

to eat a bite, and terrified, it appeared the patrons.

I was there in that tight silence,

licking my strawberry cone and it was

just like this picture of kudzu in winter,

the prettiness all overspreaded over

with something growing too fast,

enshrouding the landscape with a sinewy

fabric that lives not on the lives of others.

Or this nearest one of the house and car

in Akron, Alabama. The house is beat-up

and rusty; on the other hand habitable. You could live there

fine until something happens-a cros

flaming upon the uncut lawn, or your housegirl's husband

with his paw shot off. That blue car's

been in the yard forever just waiting

for you to ne it, and now you do.

So you head on the outside past the washer on the porch

and down the walk. You realize in and realize

you're not going anywhere: it's up upon blocks,

overrun by families of mice and birds. wherefore

did you you not ever notice that before? How stuck here

you are with the blank firmament and the fallen fences, the awful

unexplained silences of the southerly

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Mar/Apr 2000

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