Where I’m From
I am from carved oak,
wrapped in rubber tape and gripped with death
I am from the friction between shoes and hardwood
and the low panging of bouncing pig skin
I am from woven tapestry of Wesleyan words
All sung in the choir
I am from bottled lightning bugs
And the mosquitos who vow vengeance
I am from the many vinyl,
Whose melodic scriptures scratched my eardrums
I am from the plastic cretaceous period,
Whose quiet roars heard only by my tiny mind
I am from the wind that tore from my chest,
when tackled with a ball shackled in my arms.
I am from quiet buzz from a cast line,
Tugging with baited night crawlers
I am from the town,
Sliced down the torso by a creek.
I am from the stream,
That holds hands with the gulf
I am from the dust,
That dances across wooden musket racks
I am from blood spilt across Appalachia,
Long since washed away from memory
I am from callused hands,
Worked to the bone from ragged sickles
I am from famine,
From which they escaped,
I am from black lung,
From which they hacked
I am from manure and soil,
Formally grown in leveled fields.
I am from Mayberry,
Whose ideologies bounced from the screen,
Swallowed by my eyes
I am from escapism,
Oceans of stories that acted as mental morphine
I am from vast athleticism
Which motivated unfound strength.
I am from chemotherapy
That plague, fought off valiantly
I am from modesty,
Which aspires for love, not wealth.
I am from literacy,
Revealed to me in infancy,
Mesmerized by its beauty
I am a product,
Born of those who suffered,
Surviving for those that gifted me affection,
Living for the grand, eternal spirit.
Judson Tabor is an aspiring English professor who plans on writing a dissertation on Henry David Thoreau, Chris McCandless, and the concept of Transcendentalism