Turpentine Poem by James McLain

Pine of a certain color and texture before it fades.
Eating the green tips of the needles,
for certain flavor and as sweat thick and sappy.
Cutting; always trimming the tree around
in a circle like some school yard song
once only once,
I heard when i was young, gone that ma rm.
Pine trees standing tall to the sky, looking up.
Smiles from the bottom replaced with lips
of tin lips of thin tin always smiling,
with that single nail
in the center held in for the buckets, too supp.
Lee kin always leaking those heads being cut.
Nappy heads patched nappy heads, from the
sap in our hair,
gone like the moss from the trees as they swell.
Bathing in the cool narrow stream.
Moaning our mornings to short.
While the evenings for ever to long.
Trying to wash off a past the presenters, demand.