My Tuscaloosa is coming to that time in its life.
It peels its peaches with a shotgun.
It sops its biscuits in the neighbors’ wisteria.
Here it is now, making unsolicited confessions into the trumpet flowers.
Painting itself haint-blue against the daubers, the spirits, the bill collectors.
My Tuscaloosa buries its hooch down by the creek, next to the historical record and the family silver.
Swallows it down deep, past the cannonball layer and the burning coal seam.
It has never sniffed defeat, though he rents a room in the carriage house.
It is forever digging out of the yard, climbing neckbreak high in the spit-shined magnolias.
If you see My Tuscaloosa, tell it: Come on home. The porches are off their rockers,and the scuppernongs are leaping from the vine.
from Poetry Northwest 11.1 Summer & Fall 2016More by Heather Hamilton from the library
Copyright © Heather Hamilton
Used with the permission of the author
on behalf of Poetry Northwest.