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When Old Bookem plays the fiddle
at First Monday, there's a plaint
deeper than he owns hiding in the notes
like a mockingbird lost in the treetops.
Uncertain, it recalls the solitude of lean men
in a near-empty land of fragrant cedars,
cool hollows and springs where hills beyond hills
recede westward to the mythic Mississippi.
Perhaps the land itself is singing its song
through Bookem, lonesome, modal and minor,
green like the West was never green
and rough with outcrops or soft with mist,
forever arguing against the fence and plow.
Something survives in the music, ownerless
and indelible as their ancient surnames
misspelled and scattered across Alabama.
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