Southern Charm
Seven Windows on Nashville, Tennessee

I.
You would do well to dress lightly,
because I am taking you to my house
in the middle of summer.
You will step outside for the mail
and come back with three chigger bites
which you will scratch into bloody welts.
Your shirts will all become soaked with sweat
just by walking through a parking lot.
You will hear the constant drone of crickets and cicadas
until it becomes as much a part of you
as the steady labor of your lungs in the humid air.

II.
You will live on gallons of iced tea,
and it will be served with the sugar already in it.
Cornbread and biscuits will replace rolls,
but you can still have French bread,
because we aren't completely beyond the pale.
In fact, we're rather cosmopolitan
because people like you
keep passing through.

III.
You will learn to hate country music
because you can't get away from it;
voices and twanging chords mingle in open shop doors
as you walk down Second Avenue.
The Cumberland River may look cool
after that trek, but it runs swift and deep and dirty,
and you wouldn't want to get hit by a garbage barge.

IV.
You will hear me revert to my original accent.
Everyone I know says
I talk funny when I phone home.
You will find that we use
such strange instruments as "ink pins,"
and that "caint" is a perfectly acceptable way
to say you ain't got the time.
You will hurry up and wait
while we finish our sentences, laden with extra syllables,
at our own pace, and realize
that we can do whatever we want
because we talk real nice.

V.
On Sunday mornings
the air will be filled with church bells
because we're the Buckle of the Bible Belt,
although to judge by Vandy traffic,
black and gold and orange and white
have more followers than the pulpit.
Jesus was born on a football field
and raised on the racetrack.

VI.
You will see the brave mockingbird
who sings to the morning on my patio wall
and think of Atticus Finch,
Scout and Boo Radley.
You won't be wrong about our history,
but we've heard it all before,
and now we can only roll our eyes
at that ridiculous Confederate statue off of I-65.

VII.
You and I will sit in the evergreen shade of a magnolia tree
inhaling the smell of mimosa.
I will tell you how my sisters and I
would spend summer days making clover crowns,
or tossing stones in the creek,
and you will say When I was small,
we would do that too.


Copyright 2006, Rebecca E. Helton

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