sometimes I live in the country

We are rolling down Corridor X toward Birmingham eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches, figuring out how to pass the guitar over mid-song (there was only room for one guitar).  It is hot and the windows are down, Sam Cooke sits on the dashboard, his voice cutting through the highway breeze.  It's 98 degrees and there are 5 more hours until Athens. 

Our last night in Taylor was a mixture of porch songs and whiskey bottles, pork chops and purple potatoes, beets and chard that were pulled from the ground only a few hours before.  David was figuring out Poor Black Mattie in open tunings and the riff was heard out into the field from behind the busted screen door - Dusty kindly nailed it back onto the frame after the storm last week.  Then we found ourselves sailing off of the rocky swamp of the Mississippi coast - muddy brown water spilling out past the oil rigs and cranes.  Out on the water it is calm and beautiful - Rocky is barking out orders barely discernible in his thick Gulf accent.  "Pull the jib in a little more...  little more!  See them tells up on the sail?  You want 'em both flying backwards - that means the wind is catching the sail just right.  Now git ready, we gonna tack.  Git in the middle now - watch your head!"  The main swung around and we rolled over to Port.  "Let out the jib!  Let it out!"  I yanked on the thin blue rope and the jib sail caught then opened up wide - we shot across the bay and passed David and Caleb.  "Ya see what we done?  We stole their wind - cain't sail with no wind." 

We sipped rum as the orange sun lit up the bay and turned the rigs a gold metallic.  "All them fisherman and trappers - they were just sittin' around when the government them they couldn't work no more.  Then the oil company came along and paid 'em to use their boats - laying boom and whatnot, hell alotta guys got rich doing nothing - call 'em spillionaires."

We walked along the Boardwalk where old tires and bags of Doritos had washed up on shore.  Before the storm they said there were trees twice as big, hundreds of years old.  I saw the trash grow up and over the houses and parks - rigs as far as the eye could see and signs saying "Enter water at your own risk".  It will still look beautiful at sunset.  But it gets to be 4am real quick.  By the time you pack up the P.A. and load the wagon and drive to your destination along a jungle-quiet South Mississippi highway there is little time to take in the day's report.  The obedient digestion of routine that accompanied my city days was gone and each morning starts different.  The cell phone alarm woke me up just before 9am.  They just aren't the same - fumbling first for your glasses and then trying to hit a tiny plastic number with grumpy thumbs to stop the beeping.  The sound is no where close to the day's true alarm.  The old, brown one bigger than a shoe sits blind in a closet, chord wrapped around the speaker and dial with a giant snooze button resting on top. 

We left the cabin sealed
For 3 days
Hoping the flies would go
Away and for the most part
They did
Not that it mattered much
Anyway because we sat
Most of the day
And night on the porch.
It was cooler there
And there was nothing
Bad on TV
Only silhouettes of dark
Trees etched into a slightly
Bluer background of stars
Pressed deep into the sky
So you could barely tell
How bright they really burn.
I wanted to sleep there
Under the porch light engulfed
In a deep summer fog
But the bugs would be bad
And already itching I made
My way back inside.
The cheap white walls
And bent-up plastic shades
Not blocking the light
Or heat.  It was still hot
When I sat on the bed
staring up at the ceiling
Fan wobbling in orbit
Thinking it would make
A good image
To end the blog.