Landscape - Conway, North Carolina

Cotton Swooning acres of it Cotton Brown bush withering miles of it Cotton Fallen ground level clouds The white of it Memory shaking shrouds The plight of it. And all this innocence of white The black earth yields All this - strands of phony light In dry fallowing fields The rigor of it Clothing a back bending history The vigor of it Building from blood a white economy The stillness of it The dead silence about it Memories of the cross And resurrection With no stone rolled away. The cross Consist of so many varied expectations The loss Of something beyond mere integration Cotton - clothes the mind with meanings The sheer beauty of it Sin and sorrow forever the gleanings The wind sighs In fearful tumult of the spirit