A Stand of Trees by Terry Everett He takes my meanings, Joseph, this son of mine, who thinks and reads and takes pleasure in the nuances of language as he and Angie nurture Maggie Jo, just turned two. We're talking about limits of cellular phones, during a morning drive when we're letting "the girls" (Angie and Maggie Jo) sleep after the long day of before, during, and after the party at the pool for Maggie Jo. Stories of communication, family, sports, work lead to and beyond that point in it all when he says, "There's probably a poem in that that could be taken lots of ways," responding to my remark about a stand of trees. Highway 30 from Oxford to New Albany, where we are, has a run of maybe fifteen miles where cell phones cannot send or receive--a stand of trees in the rugged hills in the Holly Springs National Forest do not say a word for cellular phones. They just stand there silent, offering their prayers for those who can hear the peace at Puskus Lake, the songs of praise rising from the top of Rock Hill, near where the waters of Cypress Creek flow down to join the Tallahatchie whose valley way down stream in my Delta of farms contains still enough of brakes and bottoms to allow a stand of trees. |
Everett's poetry has appeared in TAPESTRY (DSU Division of Languages and Literature art-literary magazine) and numerous magazines and journals. He is Assistant Professor of English Emeritus from DSU where he taught courses in composition and literature.
And here is another: "Uncle Bob's Empire."
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