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Tulip Magnolia

Sorrow is my own yard  where the new grass  flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire  that closes round me this year William Carlos Williams- The Widow’s Lament in Springtime Every spring I have to ask for the name again. Tulip poplar, Saucer Magnolia, something like that, you’d think I wouldn’t be surprised by her anymore. Whereas last week empty arms cast veins of silhouettes across a cold carpet of previous year's leaves, today I’m able to come home from a long day of work, and face her canopy of flowers, half open like teacups, and that is miraculous news. I take it as further evidence that after two years the sucking wound in my chest has finally closed.  Each March was a celebration, a maelstrom of pink hung beneath the blue, pinks so dark along thick shouldered leaves, almost purple, and then bleeding out rapidly to porcelain white, there was no ignoring it. I notched one end of an eight foot pallet we brought home into the main cluste...
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Dawn Chorus

Being that it’s an airstream, the back end is curved almost exactly like a tilt-a-whirl. A couple days before she drove it home from Roanoke, I carry my sawzall up a ladder up into the limbs of one of the two huge crepe myrtles out front of the house and carve a hollow into the canopy so that when I back it in, jack and level it, it nestles almost perfectly underneath. It’s magnificent seventies era paint job is faded, with a patchwork of bondo. It’s name ARGOSY is printed across the nose. I feel like I should have something poignant to say about Jason and the Argonauts, but I don’t. My high school buddy Matt who sold us this thing ripped out everything in the back half and retrofitted an exquisite perimeter of benches made from cherry plywood along with a platform in the way back which is where I sleep, going on a couple months now since she threw me out.  I wake up with the birds, the dawn chorus, or sometimes it’s miles of train linking up not far away in the ACCA yard. I reckon...
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Mountain

I came out of the blackout to more trees, the truck moving miraculously through them. The music was still blaring, arrogant, insane and relentless. My headlights raked across attendant pines ahead, black dust tinged red with my taillights still rose behind.  I cornered badly, hit more washboard, the back end bucked and broke loose again. I laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. The box of beers fell off the seat next to me and into the passenger well, bottles rattling and shattered against themselves. My two good right tires bounced along the ragged edge of where it went from road to straight down. I managed to bring it out of the skid, avoiding the holler, and then clambering over another hill made it somehow over the final ridge. The idea had been to take the fireroads home from Carolina. I was racing against my body as it shut down from pure exhaustion. The clock on the dash read 2:48. The road started falling again, snaking down into the valley, the truck and I punched a ho...
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