"In the Night Orchard" is a retrospective collection of poems gleaned from over three decades of writing by a poet absorbed by nature and culture in the American South. These often-narrative poems are concerned with history, race, indigenous music, the many Southern dialects and customs and the quest for authentic identity.
Skull, Grim, and Grinning
I forgot how barbed wire snarls--
like a low bird's nest--caught
the cold raccoon last winter.
He found his own death there,
and each snagged stage of ice,
sun and hungry birds had a say
as weeds blew and I found
human obligations to occupy me.
But after thaw I went walking,
saw a twisted root (spring's
first threat of snake), red eye-
shape of new sumac leaves,
deer tracks by the hundred,
and on the rotted fence post
polished to blinding shine by sun,
the forgotten relic hung,
a barbed cocoon coiled around
a fanged white flower of bone.