Hemingway, South Carolina

I haven't written anything in a while, so I guess this is an attempt at SOMETHING.

We lingered in innocent dreams
beneath the oak boughs heavy with
Spanish moss
until summer torrents rolled in across the horizon,
and when I ran home afraid of the coming
storm,
you persisted through the thunder and rain,
and while you thought yourself brave, you
always came home soaked and
cold.

You swore we would shed the
skeletons of Hemingway,
escape from the shackles of the
shuttering mills,
ghostly housing developments,
and the stifled roar of decaying
middle America.

You promised salvation from
obscurity,
but when your orders came down,
you tried to temper the news with matching kinetic
perpetuals,
and set them both to the time of Hemingway.

You asked me to always face the storms head on,
not to cower or run,
or I would never get where I was meant to
be.

The next morning you were gone,
and your promises of salvation
gone with you.

Our childhood lingers in the
sticky heat of the Old Episcopal,
the bitter service taking place
slightly sweetened by candles and incense.
Outside, late day rains soften
the ground, and occasional cracks
of lightning snap me back
to this solemn reality.

When the storm passes beyond the trees,
I’ll go back to the old oak,
and pull up the earth and the clay
beneath the fog and
Spanish moss
to bury the face and hands of your
perpetual,
to bury your dreams,
and our childhood.