August, Time Stops in the Deep South
/Paul Freidinger
I desert the future, forest the past
with clouded memory, conquest the air,
I am getting used to mouthing heat index,
amulet of despair. My wife keeps saying
it sneaks up on you, dangerous the woods
with ticks, bugs, snakes, poison ivy. I tug
the black river, dense from tannic acid,
time stops here, torpor of illusion. August
stirs muggy into every morning as the sun
hangs like a dead man on the end of a rope,
ghosts taunt me with their stories curdling
through an infinite afternoon, cicada buzz
electric when I gaze through deep shade.
I sleep the hour, everything closes down,
ennui is my neighbor knocking the door,
muffled with deterrence. Do I answer,
do I answer? You are welcome, no one else,
no one else. In the lull, I contest the quest
to keep on living.
Author’s Bio: I grew up in farm country in central Illinois and have always been drawn to rural settings. I also have a long history in Edisto Island, SC, and sense some similarity to its own rural ecology. Still, it is different from the Midwest. The weight of history is heavy in the deep South. A friend of mine told me years ago that the best description for summer here was the word muggy. People slow down in the summer, they temper ambition, and limit too much talk. Around the island are sand roads, live oaks, palmettos, marshland, and tidal creeks, with plenty of open space. Sometimes those settings seem primordial as if nothing has touched them for a thousand years. I often stop while driving around, get out of the car, and observe the scene. The views are peace, beautiful, and bucolic. They are also stultifying, all the more so when considering how Edisto was settled by Europeans. At one time there were twenty-nine plantations here, ranging from five thousand to ten thousand acres. In those moments I feel the struggles people faced here and the challenges of the climate, how it shaped attitudes and behavior. As climate change becomes more of a factor on our lives here, it is impossible for me not to consider that the heat, the sea, and the land will have the final word.
Paul Freidinger is a poet residing in Edisto Beach, SC, where the ocean continues to rise. It keeps him awake at night. Thankfully, writing sustains him. Paul was raised in Illinois farm country, taught school in suburban Chicago, and now lives in South Carolina’s low country where he also has a long history. He has poems recently published or forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Florida Review, Grist, Harpur Palate, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Isthmus, Pacific Review, Portland Review, Reunion: The Brasilia Review, The Dallas Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Triggerfish Critical Review, and William & Mary Review, among others.
