Bop: 40 Acres & a Mule on Apalachicola National Forest

Notwithstanding in this, rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.

—Luke 10:20

He left: deep-rooted pecan trees, arms full of hanging moss, backdrop the eavesdrop of soughing trees near cornfields, where sweet potato & tomato gardens border remnants of a rusted fence, the color of dried blood once used to pin a wayward bull my daddy & his brother taunted on walks home past the cottonmouth basking on grandma Lacie’s cement doorstep.

you had better hush, hush, hush Somebody’s calling my name

I always jumped or rode over snakes with the front wheel of my Huffy bike, where daddy pulped bullet grapes or muscadines for moonshine in the mudroom shot-off from the garage, & taught me to wade out of quicksand, catch catfish with bare hands while squatting in shallow pools of fresh water, & how to track deer, bear, wild boar & the Thanksgiving turkey, & how to pick blackberries, & plant a strawberry garden atop the hill where a seven-foot rattler interrupted five brothers with shotguns.

hush, hush, hush Somebody’s calling my name

Could thunder have caused the earthquake grandma Lacie said loosed floorboards & rattled her photo with the picture frame lamp of President Kennedy, the same summer I willed folded wash cloths to levitate over the laundry basket like butterflies caught in a mason jar? The ghost of my great-grandfather, John Wyart Hill, called my name nightly in psalm.

you better hush, hush, hush Somebody’s calling my name