Very Recent Past

But how long ago was it in television years? How was it

that dams & turpentine forests, back
red dirt roads became the godhead? In terms,

that is, of patter ghosting through shape?

What news for the natcheral man?

(If metaphor by nature kicks in before the fantasy’s revealed
was it ever true
what they say about Dixie?)

Whose heart was that on the Alabama license plate?

What pockets of resistance, in what souls?