Dixieland

Baby, you make
me want

to burn up all
my pies

to give over
an apple to fire

or loose track
of time & send

a large pecan
smokeward, or

sink some peach
cobbler. See, to me

you are a Canada
someplace north

I have been, for years,
headed & not

known it.
If only I'd read

the moss on the tree!
instead of shaking

it for fruit--
you are a found

fallen thing--
a freedom--not this red

bloodhound ground--

Copyright © 2001 by Kevin Young.

Kevin Young is Ruth Lilly Professor of Poetry at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of To Repel Ghosts (2001) and Most Way Home (1995), selected by Lucille Clifton as part of the National Poetry Series and winner of the John C. Zacharis First Book Prize from Ploughshares.

...