Southwest, Southeast
I will have to die in California
like frost on water with the taste
of corn liquor on the tongue.
That will be the endgame payment
for spending a lifetime away, out
where the pines shelter the mountains
and the Piedmont hills guard & absolve me—
my home, this skin, and all of our unfettered
dreams. There will be something waiting
there where I once understood the nature
of wildfire and how the sand soaks the days.
How can I know if I’m dead
if I can’t see the loblolly needles fall from trees,
the Eastern bark be stripped away from the body.
If I have to die where I was born, give me a woodman’s
marker—grizzled, uneven stump of stone—
but bury it and me in the graveyard just past
the blind curve in Redlands at the end
of San Timoteo Canyon. There, past old iron
and rough-hewn marble, is an eastern pin oak
far from home and has been for far too long.
Bury me at its base where you can find
space between the roots. We, the tree and
I, will be there at the highest point of the graveyard,
watching cars go around hillside curve, over
the embankment, with souls fleeing
elsewhere—away.
Joel Ferdon's chapbook, Elegy for My Father’s Bones, was published by Louisiana Literature Press in 2016, and his poems have appeared in Verse Daily, Flyway, and The Southern Quarterly. Joel is the recipient of an NC Arts Council Grant and serves as the Director of Library Services at Stanly Community College in Albemarle, NC. He lives with his wife, son, and three black labs in Charlotte.