Patterson Gap is at the end of Hell's Hollow, on the other side is the Chattahoochee National Forest.
Photo by Danny Mashburn
I'm not sure but some think this is Jackson Patterson's farm at the end of Hell's Hollow. This does look like the end of the hollow. If so, the house was built by my grandfather. Patterson Gap would be somewhere in the distance.
For a while I was maintaining another blog to archive my old poems, I've decided to shut it down and put some of my favorites here on this website. Eventually, I will have all of them on this website but haven't decided exactly how to proceed.
Below is a very early poem. It is a result, I believe, of the absorption of a culture by sound and silence. I didn't really grow up in the culture of the poem; but I "felt" it in by what was said and what wasn't said around me. Of course, that culture is gone now, even the land is unrecognizable. This is just a scrap of that culture left behind and almost forgotten.
A
Southern Smile
Chair,
the room with
white
walls
Come…
sit down to fry.
My
body balloons with
a
fever
Mother
somewhere, cries…
My
man sits down to break-
fast
sits
down to food-feast.
My
body longs a drink to health
longs
a sad sweet sleep.
Rest
easy my man I drift
by-e
All
hail your toast and jam,
I
taste your last bit of Oran-juice
Such
soft shoulders in my hands.
A
flip of wrists; neck-twist,
feel
sadness,
a
Southern lady screams in pain.
I’m
drawn away to face the
day
looks
like a sky-rain.
All
is lost my body tossed
on
a cool linen sheet,
Must
have been a dream my friend
One
dreamed quick before I sweet-sleeped.
“It
was in all the papers,”
said
the man,
“So
fine a Southern belle,
the
same morning he was
fried,
God rest him –“
--
he smiled --
“God
rest him in hell.”