Something Slight and Beautiful

For the South

By Neal Bowers

I hate your hills white with dogwood

or pink with redbud in spring

as if you invented hope, as if

in the middle of red clay,

limestone outcroppings,

and oak trees dead with fungus

something slight and beautiful

should make us smile.

I hate the way honeysuckle drapes

fences, blooms in the ditch   

where everyone dumps garbage;

the evening air sweet with cedar

and fields of burley;

the way irises and buttercups

mark the old dimensions of a house

destroyed a hundred years ago;

how a span of Queen Anne’s lace

rocks the whole moon, and the sumac

runs dark against the hill.

I hate the drawl, the lazy voice

saying I’ve been away so long

I sound like I’m from nowhere;

the old hand gathering snowballs or peonies

or forking up an extra dish of greens,

bitter, just the way I like them.