Eldorado Arkansas

Eldorado Arkansas

Back where I belong, people eat black-eyed peas and collard greens, they sit in fenced in

porches and smell the neighbor's trash burning and hear the cicadas buzz out in the

pines and watch the darkness of twilight seep down the long straight lodge-pole

trunks like molasses until it pools along the ground to mix with the dry needles.

Where I belong, people listen for the train, but they never see it--- only its black tail like a

swarm of crows on the horizon over the tree tops and they know someone's coming,

from somewhere far up north, someone who left little and comes back with little ones of

his own.

Back where I should be right now, people drink iced tea in December and it's never

under 50 degrees and you can sweat even on the coldest of days; it's the land of pines and

it's the land of warm cookin' and fresh mornings and my long skinny grandpa smilin' and

my grandma laughin' and me knowin' that Santa would find me even without snow

because, back when I used to go there it always seemed to be Christmas.