get the June 2014 108 page cc&d magazine
1994-1997 anniversary
issue supplement collection 6" x 9" ISBN#
paperback book:
Around the Bend
errol miller
“Bury the bygone South.”
Stephen Vincent Benet
Where Mama wept the porch is quiet
a woman’s woman her hands dance
in Tidewater bars across the ravine
we are talking about history and religion
and feudal small-town regions over there
the old me contained in time capsules
buried in Montevallo, I am two different
individuals, I am too different, I am made
from New York City’s cosmo-clay, I am
sending my son to poetry school
in the northern hills of Louisiana
next door to the creosote plant
where he’ll have a chance to endlessly study
Anglo-Saxon nouns and verbs in overalls
through the blue parlor of time I have moved
forward to this place looking out upon
this faded pastel photograph of pink larkspur
and wisteria, oak and elm, sifting
my frail pulse to the wind
all I ever wanted was a little country place
an order of things, a swing, a firefly
and the valley’s wood smoke overhead
through the dark night of life a beacon
of hope: nobody has ever walked
through the parlor until now, another mile
to go, to the apple orchard, to the fires
of those who have gone before
who waded barefoot through
the rushing limestone streams
flowing into infinity, into Urbana’s
lumbering shrouded mill.