FROM THE SAVANNAH IDYLL COLLECTION
I speak of the south with special love.
Like a beautiful lady with a hard history.
She never gave up her honesty.
With everything that’s come to pass
in our country,
we truly are a family now.
The rust and iron of our past
is alloyed with new metals
worth more than gold.
I enjoy the world for what’s in it.
The staircase inside my heart
looks on the tour busses
and remembers other places.
London.
The cold and noise of New York.
Puget Sound with its rain and fog,
and southern children
finding their way in Los Angeles.
And people coming from everywhere
in the world to Savannah,
like parts of a family,
truly a part of us,
and we trade places sometimes.
That’s the way it is
when I walk down State Street,
look at the pilings of the harbor,
and wonder,
is there anywhere to go but here?
Where my heart lives.
And the airport tells me
with those planes overhead,
the city limits are as far
as they can take me,
and I do my part to be quiet
and speak low,
and tell those people disembarking
what the other side of town looks like.