VOLUME 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS
BOTTOM COUNTRY
It still claims you, Mark, pulls you in
with wide-eyed songs and echoes
like a tired well makes when the point
gives up and has to be shot again.
The heart can only take so many.
They look at you with a kind
of wall-eyed farm-animal sympathy,
your dad's misguided boy, the one
fool enough to go Nashville-crazy
and hope to make big money.
Your hooks go way beyond fishing,
lure triumph with blue-eyed charm
and color the local soul with native ills.
Face to face with yokels in tavern light,
their eyes listen even if the ears don't.
I fought back tears when I heard
your shades of Shenandoah
that purple mist I almost forgot,
a case of homesick blues
clangin' like garbage can lids.
Take my spirit with you, buddy,
past the echo of bottom country wells
and down those endless ravines
where the river bird's far away cry
is one thing you never get over.
Go on, ease into your outfits made
for suburban life, drive shinier pick-ups
and mow your ten acre lawn sitting down,
but your git-tar themes still
keep a gut-tight feeling close to home.
Turn loose your ramblin', rough shod
notes for a homeboy minute,
wiggle your dark cabin roots for a spell,
hoof up the splinters so Danny
can dance to his own rapture again.
Let go a mule-eared whisper
now & then when they stand around
afraid dancin' might wear out their clothes
from the inside and girls hang back
pretending to read off the wall.
Take 'em stompin' through
fields gone to seed and briars
full of berries for a bottom country jam,
& remember me with a trace
of everlasting red clay under my nails.