Poetic License~Dr. Margaret Abagail Walker Alexander 1915-1998

 

Southern Song 


I want my body bathed again by southern suns, my soul 
reclaimed again from southern land. I want to rest 
again in southern fields, in grass and hay and clover 
bloom; to lay my hand again upon the clay baked by a 
southern sun, to touch the rain-soaked earth and smell 
the smell of soil. 

I want my rest unbroken in the fields of southern earth; 
freedom to watch the corn wave silver in the sun and 
mark the splashing of a brook, a pond with ducks and 
frogs and count the clouds. 


I want no mobs to wrench me from my southern rest; no 
forms to take me in the night and burn my shack and 
make for me a nightmare full of oil and flame. 


I want my careless song to strike no minor key; no fiend to 
stand between my body's soutnern song--the fusion of 
the South, my body's song and me. 


Dr. Margaret Walker