ON STILL NIGHTS

Sometimes...

I recall, I recall
a full lifetime in the past
being young and free and all
unaware youth would not last

In Mississippi in the heat
just sitting on a sandstone ledge
short pants on and tough bare feet
on a gravel roadside's edge.

Watching clouds and watching crows
floating lazy in the sky.
Listening to a corn field as it grows.
Waving when scarce cars passed by.

I recall...

Shucking off all but underwear
then jumping into Indian Creek
water spraying everywhere.
Not one single joint would creak.

Then finding a wild grape vine
which tangled in the canopy
cutting it and drinking the sappy wine
then swinging like Tarzan wild and free.

Studying a yellow float
as it bobbed in a farm pond
while giving a horse fly a smote
as sun bleached my hair blond.

Memories of wood smoke's flavor
amid cigars, pipes with the old fellows.
And how on cold days we would savor
how pot belly stove would crack and bellow

These days it seems I recall all,
rabbit hunts in cotton fields;
kin and friends playing baseball,
gardens and bountiful yields.

Over sixty years of memory
just ten or twelve from childhood times;
those years that made me what I'd be
a man of toil who writes some rhymes.