Lugoff, by Barry Yelton

Copyright 2008

in a broke down little place
just off the interstate
west to nowhere
summer heated sidewalks
burn the soles of small
brown feet
stepping quick
in front of mama
into the laundromat

and dark seamed faces
stare blank
from the half shaded porch
of a tumbledown grocery
hands of mill and field
of a thousand tiresome yesterdays
and the smoke from cigarettes
curls upward
and aggravates the flies
buzzing slowly
in the dense summer air

seems distant somehow
he thinks
that long lost past
living in another time and place
when joints didn’t ache
with arthritis
and calloused hands
did hard work all day
and caressed the body
of his woman at night
when energy surged up
and life seemed sweet
distant now
far away in a
wearisome place
a man is too tired to even dream of
a lost place
lost in the haze and the heat
years ago

the cigarette burns slowly down
unnoticed
until the sting causes him to drop it
on the dirty boards of the porch

lordy

over yonder in the shade
of a dusty old oak
a flop-eared hound
sums it all up
with one,
huge,
sigh