Roscoe Holcomb On The Radio (poem, folk blues)

FOR ROSCOE HOLCOMB: VOCALS, AND BANJO

So…
Did you really think the sun shone down in your house out on hillbilly row?
When the rains flowed and fed great fields of kudzu and honeysuckle
you watched your gardens fade and fall, dry and die into the barren
granite mothered soil, and all the bream and bark in the world
just wouldn’t fertilize, wouldn’t hold the sands long enough to seed.
But you try. And when it’s good, on the front porch above the haze
it’s a vision of green mountains and steaming thin rivers cutting
through the gorge, beautiful. And when it’s corn and bean shucking time
you still have the heart to whistle “In the Pines”,
and you hope someone can hear you, you hope someone will whistle back
through the woods, maybe even cross over to your land.

Dried flowers, a dusty letter, Japanese figurines, yellow light on…