Biographical Non-Fiction posted August 28, 2023


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Southern Livin' 101

by Tom Horonzy


 
Idyllic. Charming. Characteristic of things past,
present, and futuristic in their perspective places.
 
Sitting beneath an azure blue sky cemented in place
below a broiling sun on a hot summer day, there 
is no escape. Its rays dance earthward on everything 
not shaded by a canopy of deciduous trees,
inter-twined with coniferous loblolly pines 
undulating gently on a warm Southern breeze.

Every awn on every lawn, pasture, and prairie
wave mutually to each other just as country folk do
whenever they come into view of a neighbor settin'
on a wrap-around porch, waving their wanded fans,
yo-yoing on cane-bottomed and aluminum rockers.
 
Dogs pant for air under tractors and pickups
preserving what strength survived their chasing cars
on the pebbled, dusty country roads before exhaustion
stole away the air they breathed.
 
Young'uns frolick on earthen ground as if the heat 
wasn't around, tanning bare shoulders, wearing overalls.
The scent of magnolia wafts through space while
squirrels wile away chomping on unripened pecans.
 
Pop's loaded twenty-two sits passively still across his lap
as he chews a chaw of Red Man tobacky.
 
It would take an extreme effort to visit the privy in this heat 
which, by the way, would disturb the local flies inhabiting
a cutout seat behind a slatted door bearing a cutout of
a waning moon.
 
Life on the farm carries on. Nothing disturbs it,
at least 'til ma's wood-burning stove fires to life
baking a loaf of pone and a sampling of black-eye peas.
 
After suppin', as the heat peters out, the folks written about
herein resume their country livin' only more leisurely than 
before, fully contented.
 



True Story Contest contest entry

Recognized


I married my best friend, the first in her clan to go to college. Meeting her family at Poor Boy Farm was an event to remember. This is how I recall the great life she lived before entering the concrete jungle of city life.

The photo is my own of a scene on the farm in which she lived in '79, and to where we returned in 2017 to build her dream home on Nevertheless Acres. The barn and tractor remain today. Edited by me using creativity using PicMonkey.
Pays one point and 2 member cents.


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© Copyright 2024. Tom Horonzy All rights reserved.
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