A Couple of Locals in Dixie

Local Climate

A quarter past noon and the saints

Of Pine Valley are still in church.

The warmth says early October.

The low sun and completely bare

Branches shine early November.

Six rainless months of powdered dust,

Ankle deep right next to the creek,

Puff up at every step, Never!

Local Time

Think of a time-slip story,

Like Tom’s Midnight Garden, or

Time and Again, or Bid Time

Return, or Time After Time,

Or The Time Traveler’s Wife.

Think of the ones where you just

Fool yourself into thinking

The past is all around you

In these period details,

These fixtures of a lost world. . . .

Presto! You’re back in the past.

Look at you, almost passing

For native in this era,

As if you were not the ghost 

Of the future never yet.