FROM SAVANNA IDYLL
Sometimes my youth returns.
The maypole sprouts its girls.
Atoms explode in my heart.
Then I realize
this old city isn’t old.
It has no gift for dying.
I think,
like everything eternal,
it was never meant to go away.
It had a hard birth.
It faced the corruption of Sherman.
Its boys died in the fields
with Yankee boys,
and the Lord cried for all of them.
Savannah was spared the torch,
like a life that says
I will live every last moment of myself.
And people knew it.
The people from the north
grow quiet here.
Their faces get young.
Hardness goes away and
they look at the moss and smile.
They’ve never seen anything prettier
than our girls.
Heard English said
like it should be said.
Watch gardens taking time
to put color in their flowers,
and I’m sure
they take back part of us,
a piece of the south.
A little more courtesy
toward one another.
Walking more quietly
so the birds don’t fly away.
Then to know
it’s normal to be smart.
To feel like a boy or girl.
And maybe
what should have been,
a world decent in its treatment of others,
starts with the day,
and goes to bed
like a child at peace