Georgia - Brian Brown

I follow the same red dirt highways
seeking a celestial music,
a fugue of meadow beauty,
a cantata of dandelion wings.
Stand shamelessly before
unlocked doors of farmhouses
long abandoned, where icicles of neglect
hang permanently from fragile panes.
Stereotypes vanish into the towns,
the old folks at home now
seeking lottery tickets, the placebo
salve of Wal-Mart's low prices.
Roadside religion surrenders
to a plethora of prefab churches,
with billboard sermons threatening
surefire damnation to the unsaved.
I listen again and still I hear
no special music,
just the sorry whine of rusting hinges,
an insolent bluegrass.
Announcing the arrival
of doublewides in every field,
every forest where I first got high,
where I first got hard.