Everett

A boy in my Nature Writing class
once described the smell of magnolia blossoms
as a miasma of semen and sweat.
He also used "varicose veins" in both of his
pieces that semester.

I remembered frozen magnolia leaves
on Dee's farm during the ice storm of 1995,
and, after looking up the definition of miasma,
the smell of chicken shit during the summer
when the wind would carry it from adjacent
Tyson manors.

That same wind would carry Maw Dee
across the small rectangular pond in
her cow pasture.

She would float on her back for hours
dressed in a modest nightgown;
her black beehive hair let down.

Her hair would disperse and find it's way
to the pear trees, and apple trees, and row crops.
Her thoughts crawled out of her ears like the green
worms we found husking corn and took flight.