Southern Poet

His is a thirsting breed.
Eyes, dry with dis-
appointment, salt-
cured and shriveled.

Words, wet with whim,
weighed by cloud-
bursts of reverie,
          reverie.

His heart humid,
heavy with dreams
drained by August
suns and truth
oppressive truth.

His romance, deluded,
coated in gypsum,
smothered in fancy
          fallacy,

for he’s too aware,
sand never glistens
in Carolina sun, only
dulls and dries

sits hot and coarse
beneath wintered
stonewashed skin

and kisses of ocean
tides leave shores
tongue-salted
and waterless
          waterless.

East Tennessee Wind

I never believed in ghosts,
Or haunted places,
But tonight,           I heard
Beneath the creaking sway,
The sore moan of oaks
Rattling in Smokey winds,
Voices of the past.

Slowly bellowing lowly
Lonely songs           sad
and succinct. Hunched
like a wounded thing, left
heaving wrenched breaths
on a dark roadside. Then
Stillness
Silence.

I never believed in ghosts
Or haunted places
But tonight,           I heard
Her                     echoes
In a moonlit gale, luring
Me into a roadside stare
Of headlights and
          Memory.

copyright © 2006 todd jennings

T.A. Jennings is an officer in the US Navy. He is originally from
Kentucky and has spent most of his life either or living or traveling
through the southern states. His work focuses on tying the land and climate of his surroundings into the mood and meaning of the piece. He has been published in The Spitjaw Review and the Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry Review.