In the Night Orchard is a retrospective collection of poems gleaned from over three decades of writing by a poet absorbed by nature and culture in the American South. These often-narrative poems are concerned with history, race, indigenous music, the many Southern dialects and customs and the quest for authentic identity. Skull, Grim, and Grinning I forgot how barbed wire snarls-- like a low bird's nest--caught the cold raccoon last winter. He found his own death there, and each snagged stage of ice, sun and ...
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In the Night Orchard is a retrospective collection of poems gleaned from over three decades of writing by a poet absorbed by nature and culture in the American South. These often-narrative poems are concerned with history, race, indigenous music, the many Southern dialects and customs and the quest for authentic identity. Skull, Grim, and Grinning I forgot how barbed wire snarls-- like a low bird's nest--caught the cold raccoon last winter. He found his own death there, and each snagged stage of ice, sun and hungry birds had a say as weeds blew and I found human obligations to occupy me. But after thaw I went walking, saw a twisted root (spring's first threat of snake), red eye- shape of new sumac leaves, deer tracks by the hundred, and on the rotted fence post polished to blinding shine by sun, the forgotten relic hung, a barbed cocoon coiled around a fanged white flower of bone.
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