Unlike the
idiot masses
of mental
slaves,
I’m not limited
in my thoughts
and values
according to
the time and
place my body
happens to
inhabit.
Just recently
I’ve immersed
myself in
old-timey
“Hillbilly”
Life,
though I’m
a modern
Northerner
by birth.
(vicious fate).
Of course much
of the old
Appalacian
ways have
been destroyed
by the forces
behind modernity,
but I can imagine
a life of pure
mountain
air, log cabins
built a kingly
distance apart,
barefoot Ellie
Mays, and blue-
grass energy.
It’s just what my
city-soaked soul
needs. And while
I can only live
there and then
mentally
for now and
perhaps the
rest of this life,
( or at least
until the aliens
agree to whirl
me back to 1893,)
in the
meantime I can
dream and play
those old
Appalacian
melodies
on my dulcimer
and stand atop my
solitary mountain
like a Sovereign
looking downing
on a life that
I could choose
to lead,
compete with a
a no-mortgage
log cabin, rows of
corn, and kids who
feel and
think like me.
(There’s no
generation gap
in a real society.)
And I’ll love in
my mind that
mountain flower
of a wife
waiting in the
bedroom with
a banjo on
her
knee.
— Fyodor Bukowski