The
Brier Sings the Blues
Carol
Dee Pigg
He
always felt too close to the lights
when he returned from a trip back home.
He would lament the loss of himself over
a beer, thinking of all the cracks that
resided in the shadows of his small room. He
could only do this when the conversations in his
mind stopped. He could still hear his
granddaddy’s voice, calling the coon hounds home
after a long hunt, and he tried to forget.
These nights were dark, even with the lights,
because he could never let go of the smells of home,
the memories of faces he longed to see again, of
the leaves turning orange and red and gold,
of feeling his tongue laugh as he drank the muscadine
wine that his cousin made last year, or of knowing
that the mountains would follow him, whispering of home,
after only a few days there.
Turning away from the light, he embraced the shadows
that crept across his heart—he would welcome these memories
anytime.
***
Carol
Dee Pigg teaches English at Martin Methodist College in Pulaski,
Tennessee.
©
Carol Dee Pigg