North Carolina - A Rambling

[Original date of writing unknown}

Lying in the backseat,

tumbling down the road…

The afternoon sun seems markedly high in the steely yet pale blue sky,

tired even though it peers across all the eye can see with sparkling white-yellow hues at midday,

and the snow has just started to melt

along with the excitement

from the novelty it brings once every 2 years,

yet it never stays.

Maybe it’s because the slow charm

of Southern hospitality

seems validated,

especially alongside the adjacent

quixotic business

of the American fait accompli

rolling along

through our manufactured modernity

And when smooth white blankets

slide over

caressing the landscape

to beg silence for an instant in wonder,

it’s a close companion

to the Appalachians in Autumn,

where tranquility longs to be.

It’s almost like the mountains

are sighing

in tapered blue

while the rest of Nature

is singing

in luscious green.

One would almost be moved to believe

that the trees,

and the rocks and streams

are listing in and out of their own

prescient thought-dream.

All I know is Tennessee is a jealous little brother

that the Carolinas like to point and laugh at

because they won’t

let him closer

to the raucously inviting

cosmic-directed sea.

So as we get closer

to Nanny’s house,

just before the meaningless family tensions

that dominate family Sunday dinners

cut the air,

the thinly cut snow

in its layered masses

thinning by the light of pale day

spreads intently in fading

and dances into

the late blooming sky.

San Francisco has never seen snow,

and says they have better weather.

New Yorkers pride themselves

on plowing the equivalent of multiple lesser cities

in the vicinity of hours,

but I sometimes wonder

how many other landscapes

celebrate their own fluctuation

quite as smoothly

as to be proud

to call themselves home

during every season.