Land Luggage.

If
you
should
find
yourself in Tishomingo, walking the flatland
on East Main street, looking over the Pennington Creek bridge—
Bury a piece of your heart under the suntanned farmland,

under the red earth of the Oklahoma soil. Visit the canned cellar,
the nightstand where he laid his watch, the ten-acre ridge—
If you should find yourself in Tishomingo, walking the flatland,

Sing with the bandstand and dance with the cowhand,
but ignore the picture of the baggage, the broken old drawbridge.
Bury a piece of your heart under the suntanned farmland.

Visit her where the song of the cicada drowns out the grandstand,
and ask about her father, the farmhand, the beginning of the lineage.
If you should find yourself in Tishomingo, walking the flatland,

Lay a yellow rose on the stone where his name should stand,
and earth and flesh grasp hand in hand. Acknowledge the wreckage:
Bury a piece of your heart under the suntanned farmland.

After you find them, search for their son, my father, who played in the band
and left his trumpet for my mother. He left it unmanned—the woodland,
the image of the heartland. If you should find yourself in Tishomingo,
walking the flatland,
Bury a piece of your heart under the suntanned farmland.

"Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change . . .”

-Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defense of Poetry