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A Strange Feeling 2

If I gave it time, I suppose hundreds of things would come to mine.
Like the old two-story mansion where my father's friend made moonshine.
Like the feel of blue, an escape route, that turned many to singing the blues.
'That blue feel' was still strong and hung in the atmosphere like cloths on a back-yard cloth-line.

The combines and farm equipment now occupy the old homesites.
The Chinaberry tree, under which we buried my dog Jack, and the peach        trees from which we feasted on sweet treats appear to have taken flight.
Yes, they are the landowners, but who gave them the right?  Who gave
them the right to overlook and completely disregard as trite, the passage
to my past?  Of course, they had every legal right, and I had none. Yet,
I felt that something of great substance was taken away from me.

To see and feel such blight breeds disgust, not delight.
Was not the lowly impoverished life, lasting for O so long
and burdening languishing souls for generations enough wrong?
It was once a place where I roamed but never felt I belonged;
A place of mere existence that I longed to someday make an exit.

Forty plus years and 2000 miles removed, but the memories persisted.
And the sweet taste of family created there never departed my sensory.
And the fragrance of love introduced there never escaped my memory.
But I wanted to see my birthplace again for myself with my own eyes.
I longed to see my Genesis where I often craved a rendezvous with Exodus.

Although the feel was strange, and the pain was real, there's no           
denying that the little quiet village is very much a part of me still. 
Some things from our yesterdays are untouchable and forever sealed.
And it is often difficult to explain the pain that in time shall all be healed.


040722PS

Copyright © Curtis Johnson | Year Posted 2022

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