SONG OF THE NEW SOUTH

SONG OF THE NEW SOUTH * Land of slow meandering streams Land of fast moving cars Land of forgotten mill town dreams Land of bankers and Eurodollars * Land of culture preserved and lost Land whose pride held at such a cost Land of pine forests touched by frost Land of Palm trees and balmy coasts * Land of Mountains laden with boulders Land of cemeteries strewn with soldiers Land of the meek from quiet backwaters Land of opportunists and carpetbaggers * Land of the uneducated living in squalor Land of mansions and ostentatious glamour Land of segregation, please use the other Land of Doctor King, the true liberator * Land of the smell of competing flowers Land of factories and smokestack towers Land of the front porch and whiling away hours Land of the fast paced and bold entrepreneurs * Land of snakehandlers and Baptist fundamentalists Land of spiritualists and stargazer astrologers Land of the poor in their backwoods shacks Land of the developers who take it all back * Land of the belles who danced at the ball Land of the slaves who paid for it all Land of the cultured southern plantation Land of the uncivilized white domination * Land wheresomelive totally illiterate Land of our greatest writers and laureates * Like William Faulkner, Thomas Wolf , and Caroline Gordon Like Harper Lee, Margaret Mitchell and Robert Penn Warren. * Like Allen Tate, Lee Smith, and Truman Capote, Like Anne Tyler, Tennessee Williams and Katherine Porter * Like John Grisham, Anne Rice and Ms. Eudora Welty Like Ernest Hemingway, Carson McCullers and Wendall Berry * Land of stark contrasts; both good and both bad Land laden with memories both happy and sad * And the call of the Phoenix as it rises from the ashes distracts from its secrets; that no one discloses! * WordPlaya, March 2009