Mississippi Mercy - Vicksburg Poem by Barry Middleton

Mississippi Mercy - Vicksburg

Rating: 5.0


You can't convince me living in the town
with all its air pollution, dirt and crime,
is harder on the health than country style.
Sickness is a country way of life;
that's the way it always was and is.
A visit home is a visit to 'The Home';
that's what I think of country hospitals,
the major illness there being just old age.
Along the way the countryside is green.
If grace is green I might conclude that God
so pitied Mississippi that he spilled
his richest portion on the sickly land
to compensate the farmer's plight of toil.
I pass by palmist Sister Kane's estate,
a shack behind a sign and sunken gate,
the sign of Christ in Christian day glow red
and dripping paint for blood into a palm.
Inside the T.V. set is tuned to Him
who gave his life to pay the rent for them.
I ask directions at the local Shell.
I want to ask the rednecks, Were is Mercy?
But know they wouldn't get my city play.
They tell me how to find the hospital
returning to their beer and talk of fish.
Strange apostles lead me now-a-days,
Just take a left on Grove and go-a-ways.

Mississippi Mercy  - Vicksburg
Sunday, August 7, 2016
Topic(s) of this poem: memories
POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
Written about 1975.
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
READ THIS POEM IN OTHER LANGUAGES
Close
Error Success