I Believe In The Mythical South Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

I believe in the mythical South
the one dripping with magnolias,
honey suckle vined but

interspersed with the tick tock
of my grandfather's window shield wipers
on rainy days

when he drove us to St. Mary's
my sister and I
in his pale blue Ford Galaxy

I never learned to drive but sporadically
I believe in the South like I
believe I dreamed I was in a world

without sadness dripping Poetry's
golden lines, the gingerbread times the
nursery rhymes and Liszt as

played by my Grandmother in
her rose red dress.
please, do not think of me as

remiss that I don't count up the crimes
I know are there, the lack of air for some
their stolen lives long.

we have to live somewhere, all of us.
it's clear to me we can't live in history,
not one of us;

even God wouldn't want to live there

and so I say again as if it were a prayer
that bears repeating the South is a dream

of corn bread dipped in the honeycomb of
what you all dreamed was home when home
was no longer there.

mary angela douglas 27 october 2015