Life of a Southerner is simple...
Yet complicated in the same vein...
Plantation life combines the family...
And the workers as one in the same...

As we sit on the screened porch...
Of the Patout family’s homestead...
We look across the sugarcane fields...
With poetry dancing about our head...

With the burning embers from the harvested fields...
Lighting up the sky against the warm quiet night...
As the white smoke billows into the sky above...
Families celebrating their fortunate birthright...

Gimme some of that shuga!
Said my great grandmother Mere...
I want me some now, my baby
Don’t make me come over there!

The sugarcane is being harvested...
The smell of sweetness in the air...
With a sense of peacefulness all around...
As I relax in my antique wicker chair...

“Sugar lies in a little intact swirl...
Like sand at the bottom of a glass...”
Mixed in with my 160 proof rum...
Likely to knock me on my ass...

As we share an evening as a family...
And the workers harvest the fields...
It’s a blessing from up above...
That our sugarcane treasure does so yield...

© 2021 Jeffrey Pipes Guice