Fiddlersburg and Billie Potts Resurrected: A Note to My Brother

i don't usually publish posts more than twice a week even though i keep promising to publish more. Tonight, i was trying to clean up this office which resembles my daughter's room so i can't give her a hard time about cleaning up and i found this poem. i remembered it and edited it again, and here it is. i hope you like it as much as i do. In fact, i hope you enjoy all of my writing as much as i do.

Fiddlersburg and Billie Potts Resurrected: A Note to My Brother

the little star over the left tit.
they buried Little Billie and
no one knew in that patch of land between the rivers which was
Fiddlersburg, revisited and drowned
under the auspices of TVA,
the government men.

i would like to resurrect Little Billie and Fiddlersburg,
but there is no more South,
only a filmy, flimsy image of what used to be
or a caricature of used-to-be South.

and Robert Penn would insert some Italian here:
i would ponder the depth of what he wrote,
but what you see is what you get with this old sailor;
the point is (without Italian)
we strive for balance, and it never is balanced, especially in Italy, especially in Southern Italy; In our South, balance ain't
Southern lonesome;
it ain 't passion;
it ain't.

i may be there again,
i may be suffering enough,
touching depths of my Southern,
unbalanced male soul,
not brooking balance but
yearning for tragic,
yearning for lonesomeness.
we are the last of a breed i fear;
i wonder how many still exist,
i even wonder about you, my brother;
but we can't tell even the most intimate soul mate,
even brothers perhaps;
for to reveal the awful truth,
shit,
even to write it,
which it what it is all about, will alter it;
will take it inextricably, permanently away.
we can no longer be the tragic figure
we wish to be,
even though we've never
really figured out the tragedy.

there is a sadness in joy
because of all forgotten.
there is a joy in sadness
because of realization.

the schooner, sails hauled down,
motors into the narrow pier
in the mist of twilight.

- Bonita, California
- October, 1996