FanStory.com - Southern Livin' 101by Tom Horonzy

Idyllic. Charming. Characteristic of things past,
present, and futuristic in their perspective places.

Sitting beneath an azure blue sky cemented in place
below a broiling sun on a hot summer day, there
is no escape. Its rays dance earthward on everything
not shaded by a canopy of deciduous trees,
inter-twined with coniferous loblolly pines
undulating gently on a warm Southern breeze.

Every awn on every lawn, pasture, and prairie
wave mutually to each other just as country folk do
whenever they come into view of a neighbor settin'
on a wrap-around porch, waving their wanded fans,
yo-yoing on cane-bottomed and aluminum rockers.

Dogs pant for air under tractors and pickups
preserving what strength survived their chasing cars
on the pebbled, dusty country roads before exhaustion
stole away the air they breathed.

Young'uns frolick on earthen ground as if the heat
wasn't around, tanning bare shoulders, wearing overalls.

The scent of magnolia wafts through space while
squirrels wile away chomping on unripened pecans.

Pop's loaded twenty-two sits passively still across his lap
as he chews a chaw of Red Man tobacky.

It would take an extreme effort to visit the privy in this heat
which, by the way, would disturb the local flies inhabiting
a cutout seat behind a slatted door bearing a cutout of
a waning moon.

Life on the farm carries on. Nothing disturbs it,
at least 'til ma's wood-burning stove fires to life
baking a loaf of pone and a sampling of black-eye peas.

After suppin', as the heat peters out, the folks written about
herein resume their country livin' only more leisurely than

before, fully contented.