The Land From Where I Came

The sun set. The crickets started wailed,
out on the lawn, beneath the pail.
As the cars silence, stop going by
as the moon, its craters, starts getting high.

Where the South is heavy on the tongue
where the laundry is rightfully wrung--
peace of the yard we fight to keep--
Where the willow goes entranced to weep.

This is the land that has born I.
Made from the grand blue Southern sky--
the red Georgia clay of river bands
from the gleaming white Savannah sands.

Where the woods they keep secrets still
of simple times and cotton mills.
Where a boy can grow--  be a grown man--
And night settles deep upon the land.

Ain't got no need for fancy lights--
buildings reaching those godly heights.
We have the morals, the family, the olden times--
air to breathe and ol' friendly rhymes.

Here the patriotic U.S. is still alive,
thriving like a yellow jacket hive.
Where the citizen still has his rights --
and the new must adjust thier sights.

On this land I place my name
with all the others of the same.
And on this grass I will lay my head
on this land I can keep my bed.

Locust

Out one day into the heat,

shuffling and strolling my wet feet--

I come upon; oh! what do we have here?

A sickly locust fluttering, how so queer!

Its wings are tattered, broken and thin

from its throat it babbles a ghastly hymn

and it can fly! No, no more, no more,

this creature has been downed upon the floor.

I prod with my toe the misshapen form

to see if its body is still good and warm.

It flips and flutters out further the street--

out where the morning birds like to eat.

And it stills again, there, out there

and from its eye it loses its flair--

to await death from its inside gut

where fear and grief refuse to hunt.

It is here that I wonder, alone,

the locust is but months out of home

and taking life's chilling final hug.

Who now is wiser? Is it me or the bug?