Clay County
Just past Kellie Mae's Klip 'n' Dip Beauty Salon
and the cement slab, cinder blocks,
and rusty tin roof
of the Lawtey Grace Community Evangelical Church,
and behind the saw grass and scrub brush
along Pitchkettle Road,
a young black girl stands dawdling
with one foot behind the other,
her toe digging rhythmically
into the red clay of her driveway,
her heel wagging cozily like a cat's tail,
a metronome,
as she talks to a young man on a motorcycle,
his red helmet still on,
true biker of love.
And just before the buckwheat field
that opens lonely as grace,
the field with the massive trees in the middle,
shattered by lightning,
a slender roan horse feeds
under its basilica of broken branches,
because he knows that is the place
where the soft tufts of grass
taste the sweetest.
John Hodgen
Posted over on the Writer's Almanac
"Clay County" by John Hodgen, from Grace
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