ISSUE: Spring 1928
It is a land of gullies and red dust,
Of drouth, and sudden rainfall, and thick mud.
Ignorance walks its backroads, letting blood;
And, still, I love it well, because I must.
Land of no sudden winters, where the fall
Is but a dark cessation of the spring—
Yet I lean Southward with the wild duck’s wing,
And hear in Northern dusks the partridge call.
Man cannot tell what roots hold him to earth
That bore him like a blossom from the loam;
He only, knows that he was hers from birth,
And that her fields, however dark, are home;
Remembering her counties, he shall ache
Some morning when tumultuous streets awake.
