Coming Back South

As we are in the last 2 days of National Poetry Month & my very fresh 24 hour decision that I am jumping through a window of opportunity to return home to New Orleans. I wanted to do a repeat of this poem that is an epilouge to one I initially wrote when I made my transition from California back to the South in 1997 after a previous 10 years of pining (from 1987 to 1997). Now in a sense of deja vu here I am again after spending 1st almost 4 years in North Carolina and then 9 months in Oregon which has not be a good fit for me, I am heading home.

On Friday May 1st I will be daily musing over my transistioning out of OR to NOLa and doing this with no money, no prospect, but knowing in my gut something really big is on the horizon. If you have trust issues, I would not recommend it. If you know you are part of something bigger then you and it has to be done, then you will do it.

Coming Back South
By Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney©03

Now I know...
I came back South, not to pick wildflowers…
I came back not to see butterflies, clovers nor drink mint juleps.
I did not come back South for overly romantic, haunting reminiscing…
The mysteries that continue to tug at my heart.
Or to untangle the 19,228 yesterdays that laid up in the marshy soils.
And under the weeping willows or anchor itself in the marrow of faces…
Of ones who were not mercifully taken away from here.
I came back South to fathom the unbelievable…
The seemingly unreachable Persnickety tumbling on those back roads…
A paradigm on surface appearance seems to have no rhyme or reason.
I came back South to listen to wind sounds intertwined in trees at dusk.
And high moons at noon in June that shouldn’t be there.
Ancient winds of times blowing to unveil shield treasures…
To unfold secrets too many folks try to cover up, cover over
So for once we can all stop pretending

And that is why I came South.