A poem I wrote maybe 4 or 5 years ago; I found it on a folded sheet of paper in a box of old stuff.

In Alabama, dinner bells still hold true

in some backyards

People flock from one stop light towns

to see a festival in honor of the peanut

Elvis Sings Gospel and An Evening with Conway Twitty

crackle and hiss on your grandmother’s record player

The room with the old wash basin and the bedframe

your grandfather built

smells faintly of the haunting past, a harder time

with no shopping malls or the luxury of indoor plumbing

Days move slower here because the frame of mind is different

In the Fall, acorns litter the browning grass

and children collect fallen pecans in coat pockets

I am a different person there, the spirit of an estranged

or long since dead relative whose history is born into me